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THE END OF THE WAR 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

KEW YORK • BOSTON - CHICAGO • DALLAS 

ATLANTA • SAN FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN & CO., Limited 

LONDON - BOMBAY • CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. 

TORONTO 



THE 
END OF THE WAR 



BY 

WALTER E. WEYL 

Author of 'The New Democracy," American 
World Policies," etc. 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

1918 

AU rights reserved 






Copyright, 1918 
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

Set up and electrotyped. Published, May, 1918 






PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION 

"All which, sir, though I most powerfully and potently believe, 
yet I hold it not honesty to have it thus set down." 

Like Hamlet, in this mocking speech to Polonius, 
my critics, even when they agree with me on the facts, 
hold that it is not "honesty" thus to set them down. 
They accuse me of indiscretion because I have re- 
vealed what every one knew, or might have known, 
but chose to ignore. 

My excuse for telling the truth is that America has 
nothing to conceal. Our ideals in this w T ar are unim- 
peachable, and we are fighting literally for the wel- 
fare of humanity. We do not need the protection 
of silence. When in this book, I have criticized cer- 
tain actions of the Allied statesmen I have done so 
from no desire to be censorious, but in order to help 
bring a just international policy out of the present 
chaos of indecision. Our problems of diplomacy 
demand the same calm courage with which we face 
our military tasks ; if we evade them, the w r ar will 
drag on from blunder to catastrophe and will end on 
some inglorious day in a wretched, meaningless 
truce, in which all our principles, all our ideals and 
aspirations wall be wearily cast overboard. 

In writing as I have done, I am standing, I believe, 



PREFACE 

" behind the President." What that much abused 
phrase means, if anything, is that we should so com- 
port ourselves that the ideals which Mr. "Wilson has 
expressed for us shall be realized in action. The 
President has urged a democratic peace, a victory for 
internationalism, a war without selfish ambition or 
secret or ulterior motive, justice towards the enemy, 
frankness towards the ally. He has looked forward 
to a free concert of free peoples. If we are to stand 
behind the President in this greatest crisis in cen- 
turies, we can do so only by approaching our interna- 
tional problems with his candor and courage. 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER 



PAGE 



Postscript 1 

I The Elusive Victory 17 

II Pacifists and Patriots 38 

III The Conversion of America 50 

IV The War Against Militarism 73 ~ 

V Spoiling the Enemy 98 

VI Sacred Egoism 121 

VII America as Arbiter 139 

VIII The True Alignment 157 

IX The War Beneath the War 174 ■ 

X Is Germany Incorrigible? 189 - 

XI A Conclusive Peace 207 

XII Guarantees 224 - 

XIII The Grand Alliance 232 

XIV Obstacles to Internationalism .... 248 - 
XV At the Peace Conference 273 

XVI After the Peace Conference 296 - 



POSTSCEIPT 

As I write this postscript, which is also an intro- 
duction, the fate of the world is being decided upon 
the fields of Picardy. Hundreds of millions in all 
the Allied countries are praying for the success of 
the British, French and American soldiers, who are 
seeking to stem the tide of German invasion and end 
for all time the dream of a German world-dominion. 
While that battle rages all other preoccupations are 
thrust from our minds. If, by evil chance, the Ger- 
man arms are crowned with success, the end of the 
war will be one that we cannot contemplate except 
with horror. The Allies must hold, must fling back 
this gigantic onrush, or the power of decision will 
pass from them and will rest with their German 
conquerors. 

The book to which this is a postscript is based 
upon the assumption that the Allies can hold their 
own and can thus exert a decisive influence upon 
peace and upon the diplomacy that leads to peace. 
The book is an appeal to America to assume leader- 
ship in that diplomacy, to eliminate imperialistic 
elements from the demands of our Allies, and to at- 
tempt a settlement based on internationalism. Dur- 
ing the period while the book was being written the 
chances for such an American leadership were ex- 

1 



2 POSTSCRIPT 

cellent and the President showed signs of moving in 
this direction. He made repeated advances, though 
frequently too late. But at all times he met with 
obstinate and usually successful resistance. As a 
consequence less was accomplished than might have 
been desired. 

During the six months from April 1 until October 
1, 1917, and even afterwards, the war might have 
been concluded on the basis of internationalism and 
democracy. The Germans were discouraged; their 
U-boat campaign had netted less than had been ex- 
pected and America's participation promised an 
eventual victory to the Allies. Russia, although 
tottering, was still capable of offering resistance; 
the Italian army, as yet undefeated, stood firm in 
the Julian Alps; in Germany itself a democratic 
movement was in full swing. German discontent 
was stronger than at any previous time, and clamor- 
ous demands were being made, as also in Austria, 
for a democratic peace. It was a golden oppor- 
tunity. 

That opportunity has now been lost. By mal- 
adroitness, by diplomatic errors and by a display of 
callousness and insincerity, our Allies proved that 
they did not understand and could not act. The 
Allies revealed an inelasticity, an intolerance of the 
new Russian democracy and a thinly disguised de- 
sire for conquered territories that made diplomacy 
on a high level impossible. Rather than revise their 



POSTSCRIPT 3 

imperialistic war aims, they permitted Russia to go 
down, almost forced her to make a separate peace, 
and allowed Germany to break her up into a number 
of smaller states, easy to pit against one another. 
Italy's desire to gain hasty possession of coveted 
territory and lack of unity among the Allies led to 
Italian defeat in the fall of 1917 and to a further 
strengthening of the autocratic and militaristic 
classes in Germany. Finally, by permitting, if not 
encouraging, Japan to invade Siberia, in circum- 
stances which indicated that the proposed interven- 
tion was to be a predatory attack, our Allies set upon 
themselves the stamp of imperialism. 

To these short-sighted actions and omissions of 
our Allies the President of the United States has 
been steadfastly opposed. Repeatedly he has stood 
alone for the long-time policy based on principle, 
while statesmen in the Allied countries clamoured 
for immediate ends, a profitable victory and a puni- 
tive peace. For his own country President Wilson 
has made no special claims and he has insisted re- 
peatedly that America fights only for democracy. 
His influence has been cast on the side of a reason- 
able peace based on internationalism. If hitherto 
he has failed to bring the Allied governments to 
his point of view, it may be argued in his defence 
that the task was difficult and the opposition strong. 

It may be conceded, perhaps, that President Wil- 
son's ideals were sometimes left to hang high in the 



4 POSTSCRIPT 

diplomatic heavens and were not always brought 
down to solid earth. As in his protests to the 
belligerents before our entrance into the war, so in 
his world-addresses since, there have been at times 
a lack of reality, a failure to put force back of ideas, 
an unwillingness to use even the pressure of world 
opinion to compel opponents to accept his con- 
clusions. The crucial defect of his policy has been 
its detachment. Here was a great man uttering 
noble sentiments in noble language, yet missing one 
chance after another to translate those sentiments 
into decisive action and to force adherence upon un- 
willing Allies. 

It is notoriously easy to judge after the event and 
notoriously difficult to be fair towards those com- 
pelled to make immediate decisions. We cannot 
reasonably demand that President Wilson should 
have foreseen all the incalculable events of the world 
war. He made errors, but he avoided innumerable 
worse errors, and in his ideals, in his sympathy for 
democracy, as also in his broad view of the whole 
situation he proved himself immeasurably superior 
to the statesmen of our Allies. In the light of sub- 
sequent events, however, it now seems obvious that 
before our declaration of war we should have at- 
tempted a firm settlement with our Allies. At that 
time, when we had already broken off negotiations 
with Germany but had not yet begun hostilities, we 
already surmised, if we did not actually know, that 



POSTSCRIPT 5 

our co-belligerents had entered into mutual agree- 
ments hostile in spirit to all that we hoped to achieve 
in this war. Instead of merely insisting upon our 
individual innocence we should have demanded, as 
a condition of our belligerency, a general statement 
of the terms of the Allies. We might quietly have 
said to their governments: "Either revise your 
war aims in conformity with principles of interna- 
tionalism, so as to rob them of all tinge of imperial- 
ism and vindictiveness, or we will not join. We 
will arm and build merchant ships and shall be ready 
when you have so changed your terms, but until then 
not a man, nor a ship, nor a dollar. We are willing 
to fight on your side for world-democracy but not 
for secret treaties which you may have made among 
yourselves." 

A second opportunity to urge an international 
peace presented itself when the Russian Republic 
published its formula of "no annexations and no in- 
demnities." We should immediately have accepted, 
if not that exact formula, at least one that breathed 
the same spirit, and should have insisted upon its 
acceptance by our Allies. We should thus have 
strengthened the Kerensky Government and retained 
the allegiance of Russia. The projected Stockholm 
Conference was another of our failures. Again we 
were given the chance to invite publicity and again 
we refused. Like our Allies, we pretended to con- 
sider this Conference a mere German subterfuge; 



6 POSTSCEIPT 

in other words we played the German game. If 
Allied imperialism had more to fear from open dis- 
cussion than had German militarism, if we were 
afraid to risk a clarification and publication of war 
aims, then our moral position in the war was pre- 
carious. 

Nor does this end the list of our disastrous omis- 
sions. In July, 1917, the majority of the delegates 
in the German Reichstag offered peace resolutions 
which for many months President Wilson ignored, 
although it was obvious, from the President's own 
speeches, that only by strengthening this inconstant 
and insecure parliamentary majority could we hope 
to achieve the peace for which we fought. Similarly, 
our attitude towards the secret treaties of the Allies, 
of which the President learned in the late spring of 
1917, revealed an uncertain and hesitating diplo- 
macy. It must be remembered that it was the knowl- 
edge of these treaties that enabled the German 
rulers to smother the discontent of their own peo- 
ple; the Junkers appealed to German democrats on 
the plea that the Allies wished to crush Germany. 
At any time after June, therefore, the President, by 
calling a public inter-Allied conference, might have 
forced a denunciation of these treaties and a revision 
of peace terms. On the other hand, without such 
action it was impossible, as events proved, to hold 
Russia to our side. For the Russians, fully ac- 
quainted with these secret imperialistic compacts, 



POSTSCRIPT 7 

entered into by England, France, Italy, Roumania 
and Japan, firmly believed that the governments of 
those nations were as grasping as was that of Ger- 
many. If America had a different policy, why did 
she consort with these nations'? Why did she not 
frankly state her opinion concerning those secret 
agreements, published in Petrogracl but not pub- 
lished in the leading journals of London, Paris and 
New York? 

It would be quite unfair to describe this American 
diplomacy as tepid and timid ; and equally unfair to 
represent Mr. Wilson as a man who is always missing- 
trains. Such general accusations do not justly ap- 
praise the moral quality and the intellectual percep- 
tions of the President, who with little forewarning 
was faced with a new, menacing, complicated, and, 
above all, a constantly and rapidly changing situa- 
tion. It was difficult for him (or us) to apply 
coercion to friends and Allies and ungracious to dis- 
trust the aims of nations, whose sacrifices in this 
war had been larger and their loyalty older than 
our own, and it was equally difficult to know how far 
we might trust even the most fair-spoken of our 
enemies. Moreover, the defect of the President's 
policy was a defect, in a sense even a function, of 
its qualities. A policy that aims at international- 
ism, at mutual confidence among nations, must rely 
in large measure upon moral forces, must be patient 
and tolerant, even at the risk of becoming leaden- 



8 POSTSCRIPT 

footed. It cannot always make quick decisions or 
summary judgments. Its path is not laid out in 
advance, and its errors must be judged more lightly 
than are those of the traditional diplomacy with its 
narrower and more selfish aims and its more ancient 
rules of procedure. 

Whatever the cause of our inability to influence 
our Allies, however, it is within the province of fair 
criticism, even in these dangerous times, to suggest 
that this failure of ours to act decisively has dimin- 
ished the moral value of our participation. We have 
erred on the side of caution and generosity. We 
have too highly valued the intelligence of Allied 
statesmen and too sharply discounted our own. 
Striving for concord within the Alliance, we have 
feared to speak the truth lest it offend one or another 
of the nations heroically fighting by our side. But 
a true concert among allies is attained not when each 
is promised everything but when all are inspired by 
a single ideal. We have been silenced by what we 
were assured was the superior wisdom and the older 
experience of European statecraft. We have held 
our peace. 

In so doing we have involved ourselves in a grave 
and general error. We have forced ourselves to 
believe that we could fight for democracy and main- 
tain the integrity of the Alliance despite secret ar- 
rangements violating the principles for which we 



POSTSCRIPT 9 

fight. We have believed that we could trust to 
selfishness, enlightened and unenlightened, to over- 
come the brutal militaristic spirit of Germany. We 
have fought fire with fire and been burned in the 
process. We have kept our own skirts clean and not 
considered whether those of our Allies were clean or 
filthy. We have believed that an alliance could be 
half -moral and half -immoral, half -democratic and 
international and half-imperialistic. We have not 
faced the problem squarely. By not facing the prob- 
lem we have allowed the military supremacy to pass 
temporarily to our enemy and have destroyed for 
the time being our moral advantage, the greatest 
source of our strength. 

Today the chance for a peace based on interna- 
tionalism is slimmer than at any time since our en- 
trance into the war. Having handed over Russia 
to the Germans and isolated and lost Roumania, we 
now seem likely to force Russia to become a politi- 
cal, as well as an economic ally to Germany. We 
have created conditions where time no longer fights 
decisively in our favour and where the pressure of 
war begins to bear as heavily upon our associates as 
upon our enemies. We have robbed ourselves of 
the solace and unifying power of a great ideal, and 
have made it possible, both in the countries of our 
Allies and in those of our enemies, for the worst 
elements in the population to gain control and to 



10 POSTSCRIPT 

end the war by a compromised imperialist peace. 
We have failed because we did not have the courage 
of our convictions. 

The opportunity is lost, and yet it may return. 
If I believed that no chance remained for a peace 
based upon international principle, I should be loth 
to publish this book. The chance, though dwindling, 
still exists. There may again come about, perhaps 
as a result of the gigantic battle now fought in 
Prance, such a balancing of belligerent forces as will 
permit the United States once more to occupy the 
favourable moral and strategic position which she 
held during the months from April to October 1917, 
and, to a less degree, even until February 1918. If 
the opportunity again occurs, if we are no longer 
faced with the naked need of defence against a mili- 
taristic Germany entrenched and fortified by our 
mistakes, we cannot afford to repeat the vital errors 
which render our present situation so hazardous. 

Yet it is exactly these errors which we are again 
urged to commit. In our present mood of exag- 
gerated depression the claim is made that the policy 
of reconciliation has failed. But, in truth, it has 
not failed; it has not been tried. Indeed what has 
so signally failed has been the exactly contrary 
policy of fighting imperialism with imperialism and 
greed with greed. Today we are again exhorted to 
shut our eyes, to offer no negotiated peace and ac- 
cept none, to make no distinction among Germans, 



POSTSCRIPT 11 

all of whom are equally brutal and hypocritical, and 
not to think of peace until the enemy is prostrate, 
starved, shattered, beaten to a pulp. Then we may 
talk terms. 

Doubtless this advice is a natural reaction from 
the new revelation of German militarism voucbsaf ed 
to the Russians. The punitive peace inflicted by 
Germany upon Russia and Roumania has once more 
proved, what was painfully familiar before, that the 
Imperial German Government is still heartless, 
truculent and utterly remote from considerations of 
common decency and even of larger statesmanship. 
The Junkers, again in the saddle, are the same swag- 
gering brood, unrepentant and exultant. The radi- 
cal and democratic movement in Germany seems at 
low ebb, for German liberals are crushed by German 
victories and are overborne by a rising flood of 
jingoism. 

Yet the task of all democrats opposed to German 
militarism, though now more difficult, is the same as 
before. Our aim is to end this menace, to end it 
once for all, to end it in the only way it can be 
ended, by the creation of a secure international sys- 
tem. Today we still strengthen German militarism 
when we threaten Germany with destruction ; we still 
tie German democrats to the Junker chariot wheel 
when we fight for conquests and punitive indemni- 
ties instead of for the things that they, as well as 
we, desire. It will now take longer and more des- 



12 POSTSCRIPT ' 

perate fighting to gain our ends than if we had 
adopted a wiser policy, and we, like our enemies, 
must pay a heavier toll. At our own great cost we 
must break down anew the Junker prestige, which 
was sinking in 1917 but has again risen. Unless, 
however, we fight for a program to which German 
democrats also can subscribe, unless we fight liter- 
ally to make the world safe for democracy, for the 
German as well as the American, British and Rus- 
sian democracies, all our new expenditure of blood 
will be futile. We shall accomplish nothing even 
if after unparelleled sacrifices we gain the supreme 
military victory and our khaki-clad soldiers march 
in triumph down the silent Unter den Linden. 

If we and our Allies fight this war as we have 
fought it for almost four years, for Dalmatia, Con- 
stantinople and various Turkish islands, if we fight 
for a peace in which we at our own will and pleasure 
are to determine German and Austrian boundaries 
as Germany now determines those of Russia, the 
war is lost. Not necessarily, or at least not pri- 
marily, in a military, but in a moral sense. We may 
end the dream of German world dominion but shall 
not have come nearer to a peace based on interna- 
tionalism, and shall have incurred the danger of 
a compromised imperialist peace. The war might 
have ended in a compromise which would have been 
a victory had the compromise been based on a new 
international order. If, however, the compromise 



POSTSCRIPT 13 

ending the war is nothing but a dividing up of Rus- 
sia, China and a few other countries by nations too 
tired to fight, by nations reconciled solely by the 
privilege of spoiling enemy and ally, then we have 
an ignoble peace, and the war for democracy is a 
failure and our high pretensions are a mockery. 

The opportunity for a democratic peace may again 
recur. By pressure upon the Western front, the 
Allies may force democratic groups in Germany to 
make overtures for a peace based on international- 
ism and on a true self-determination of Russia, for 
a peace free of all taint of spoliation. It will be 
difficult to do this, however, unless our Allies refrain 
from giving final sanction to plans of Japanese con- 
quest in Siberia. Once we concede to Japan the 
right to conquer this territory we shall find it im- 
possible, except by sheer force, to prevent German, 
Austrian and Turkish aggressions against Russia. 

The war for democracy and internationalism will 
not end, however, with the treaty of peace. The 
present war is but an incident, disastrous and 
ghastly, in a larger development, in a struggle be- 
tween two principles: the principle of autocracy, 
militarism and nationalistic imperialism, and the 
principle of democracy. The moment the war ends 
the struggle will change its form, though not its 
character. There will be renewed the same conflict 
which we have witnessed for several generations, 
the same steady upward push of the masses of all 



14 POSTSCRIPT 

nations. A victory for Germany would immensely 
hamper this movement and delay an eventual victory 
of the democratic principle. It would re-establish 
the prestige of autocracy. Not even such a catas- 
trophe, however, would end the struggle between 
democracy and the autocratic principle, though the 
centre of conflict might shift from Manchester, 
Roubais and Pittsburg to Essen and Leipzig. 

To a great extent, moreover, the war, even if its 
outcome be calamitous, will have contributed to the 
victory of the democratic principle. The war has 
meant nothing if it has not meant enlightenment. 
To the peoples of all countries it has shown the lack 
of prevision and of moral quality of the governments 
which they have so long obeyed. Not only the 
autocracy of Germany, but the English, French and 
Italian rulers as well, have revealed crassly egoistic 
class motives concealed under pious phrases. The 
wage-earners of the world and the hundreds of mil- 
lions who make up the poor and disinherited will 
have long years in which to reflect upon the lessons 
of this conflict. They will come to see that back of 
the struggle between nations lay a more permanent 
conflict between ideas. They will see the war be- 
neath the war, and will realize that whatever the 
immediate issue, the victory is to the group in the 
community that is most conscious of its interests and 
most insistent upon its rights. 

It is this self-revelation of our modern ultra-na- 



POSTSCEIPT 15 

tionalism and this baring of the nakedness of class 
pretensions that will constitute in the end one of the 
great permanent victories of the war. Whatever 
the outcome, there will remain after the war the 
same clash within the nations as before. A present 
victory for internationalism and democracy, how- 
ever, a present destruction of German militarism, 
and with it of all other militarisms, is the goal to be 
achieved in the present war and a step in the direc- 
tion of an ultimate victory in the years to come. 



THE END OF THE WAR 

CHAPTER I 

THE ELUSIVE VICTORY 

In this fourth year of the war all the world longs 
for peace. The fever has almost run its course. 
Much hatred remains, much greed for territory and 
wealth, much reliance on the strength of armies and 
navies. Yet the world over men are sickened by the 
eternal bloodshed. The early optimistic enthusiasm 
has vanished, and there opens up the vista of an end- 
less prolongation of a senseless slaughter. No 
longer is there hope of an easy victory over 
dispirited foes. Instead earnest peace-loving men 
are asking themselves whether this conflict, like the 
Thirty Years' War, will not long endure and end 
only in the utter decivilization of Europe and of the 
world. 

Precisely such a situation as we are now facing 
was presaged in a remarkable anticipation by an 
English philosopher in the spring of 1914. "Let a 
European war break out," wrote Mr. Graham Wal- 
las, "perhaps between the Triple Alliance and the 
Triple Entente, which so many journalists and poli- 

17 



18 THE END OF THE WAR 

ticians in England and Germany contemplate with 
criminal levity. If the combatants prove to be 
equally balanced, it may, after the first battles, 
smoulder on for thirty years. What will be the 
population of London, or Manchester, or Chemnitz, 
or Bremen, or Milan, at the end of it?" 1 

A thirty years' war, lasting until 1944, still 
seems to us impossible. Flesh and blood could not 
stand the intolerable strain; the war must come to 
its end earlier. Yet we are as far from a decision 
as at the beginning. On land the Central Powers 
are victorious ; at sea the Allies ; and both are strain- 
ing their resources and wasting their energies at a 
speed inconceivable four years ago. The war's con- 
tagion has spread, and nations, uninterested in Ser- 
bia's fate and other controversies which gave rise 
to the contest, now marshal their forces, sacrifice 
their young men and put their whole future to the 
test. The chances of victory for the one side or the 
other alter continually, and statesmen and publicists, 
once possessed of calm judgment, are elated or panic- 
stricken by the news of successive clays. Through- 
out the nations the gambling spirit is rife, and the 
fate of the world is the stakes. 

From the gigantic battling of more than three 
years there emerges a sense of the elusiveness of 
the victory sought. In the beginning, when Ger- 
man armies were rapidly invading France, the 

i "The Great Society" by Graham Wallas, New York, 1914, p. 12. 



THE ELUSIVE VICTORY 19 

Fatherland believed that the present struggle, like 
those of '66 and '70, was to be "a fresh and merry- 
war," and just before the Marne, and afterwards, 
France was dismembered in numberless Kneipes 
throughout the German Empire. Similarly in the 
optimistic spring of 1915, English and French, rely- 
ing upon the coming Big Push and the Slavic steam- 
roller, amused themselves by dividing up enemy ter- 
ritories in anticipation of an early decisive victory. 
Since then, however, much water has flowed under 
the bridge. Millions of careless boasting boys have 
been buried deep and other millions are hobbling 
about on crutches, or, blinded or diseased, are seek- 
ing to live out mangled lives until Death comes to 
this generation and the curtain goes down upon the 
grotesque tragedy. During all this time amid 
alarms of defeat there have been exultant shrieks for 
the victory about to be grasped. The victory has 
never been grasped. It has always been three 
months ahead, always needed just one more million 
deaths, a few billion dollars more. And so, on both 
sides of that grim fighting line, which has suddenly 
replaced old political boundaries, men stumble for- 
ward, their eyes blinded by the flowing blood, their 
hearts inspired by an inner ideal, by a primitive, in- 
vincible pride and by the persistent hope of a vic- 
tory that is always to be and never is. 

Yet however patriotic, men remain men, and all 
the obsession of the present cannot deaden the mem- 



20 THE END OF THE WAR 

ory of happier days. Even the Junker, steeled in a 
philosophy of war, has his moments of regret for the 
time before sons and brothers died daily in un- 
romantic ways on distant battle-fields, when men 
might meet present enemies on terms of friendship, 
and the world was not divided against itself by bul- 
warks of bayonets, ships and lies. To the common 
run of unmartial people who form a majority of all 
nations, the war has become odious. The illusion is 
gone. It is no " merry war" but a desperate, un- 
honourable conflict, a war of money, deceit, bribery, 
murder and ruthlessness both against neutrals and 
enemies. To what does it lead? What will be the 
gain in the long years of post-bellum reckoning? 
Sober people begin to see beyond the conflict to the 
grey years to come. They still hope for victory, but 
it is a lesser victory than that once envisaged, a vic- 
tory in which the victors themselves will be over- 
burdened with debt and the care of the victims who 
achieved the victory. The hope of adequate in- 
demnities has vanished; the war as a gigantic whole 
is unprofitable. It does not pay. From a material 
point of view even a victory will not pay. 

Will it pay morally? Will the losses in blood and 
treasure be made good by permanent gains in ideals? 

Here lies the real issue, and it is the affirmative 
answer to this question which prolongs the war. So 
universal is the abhorrence of the ceaseless carnage 
that nothing but the deepest ideals could reconcile 



THE ELUSIVE VICTORY 21 

men to the struggle. Millions of us believe, how- 
ever, that to give over the battle without attaining 
the war's supreme goal would be to suffer disaster. 
The war is as odious as ever, cruel, barbaric, vile; 
and yet there seems no alternative than a submis- 
sion to enduring evil. Victory will consist in bring- 
ing about a new state of the world in which men will 
be unharassed and free, and in which great nations 
and small will live together in peace. 

Today there has arisen a new attitude toward 
peace and a larger hope for peace, because of the 
very conditions which make the present war differ- 
ent from any other in history. In the past wars 
were limited by the narrow bounds given to political 
integration, narrow bounds within which all inter- 
course between the nations took place. And peace 
was limited by the same conditions. A world peace 
was impossible in a world divided up into thousands 
of separate communities unconnected by industrial, 
social and intellectual bonds. Today the increas- 
ingly close integration of the world, which makes 
wars utterly destructive, makes a world peace con- 
ceivable. For the first time there is possibility of 
a close co-operation among nations, a sense of like- 
ness in aim and destiny. There is a dream of mu- 
tual understanding and common concert. There is 
a propagation of an international faith and of an 
international allegiance. 

This conception, at best merely struggling for ex- 



22 THE END OF THE WAK 

pression, distorted and disfigured in the throes of 
its birth, this faith in a new world society, in a new 
unity and a new concert, is the one fact which gives 
this world conflict a rational and moral base. De- 
stroy that base and nothing remains but the maniac 
clashing of rival peoples, a war which leads to a 
senseless peace, which again leads to war. Destroy 
this faith, and the war is but one of an endless chain 
of wars. In some manner and to some extent all the 
warring nations, including even those opposed to us, 
accept this faith. They cling to it despite many 
facts which should tend to make them sceptical. It 
is the vindication of this faith which alone makes 
the war anything more than a mere grotesque trag- 
edy. It is by this vindication alone that a victory 
can be won. 

But is not this real moral victory itself elusive, 
and do we not clutch at it ignorantly, and with 
clumsy hands'? It is significant that our enemies, 
against whom we are fighting for the security of 
this better world, are themselves fighting for secu- 
rity, so that echoes of our ambitions come to us 
from across enemy frontiers. Can we attain inter- 
nationalism, democracy and permanent peace by the 
mere expedient of fighting? In the beginning, it 
must be admitted, we envisaged the whole problem 
too simply. Wrapped up in a sense of the perfect 
justice of our cause, we believed that our enemy must 
soon discern and acknowledge that he was fighting 



THE ELUSIVE VICTORY 23 

against the light. Many idealists among the Allies 
expected that in a few months — in a year at most — 
they would overturn the Imperial German Govern- 
ment and confer upon the un-hated German people 
the blessings which they themselves enjoyed. Bet- 
ter still, the Germans, perceiving the abyss towards 
which their dynasts were leading them, would them- 
selves revolt, and stretch out their hands in friend- 
ship to their rescuing enemy. None of all this has 
happened; on the contrary the Germans have made 
common cause with their rulers, and believe, quite 
sincerely, that they, and they alone, are fighting for 
the right, fighting that we and our Allies may not 
crush, dismember and humiliate the Fatherland. 
From the beginning they have opposed to us ideals 
as firmly held as those that we hold. 

All our millions of soldiers, our hundreds of war- 
ships, our mountains of explosives, have failed to 
persuade them that we are fighting their cause. We 
are unable to convince them and to their surprise 
they are unable to convince us. 

The difficulty seems to be that we and our Allies 
are bringing to this problem a blunt war mind and 
are seeking a somewhat impalpable solution by ex- 
cessively palpable instruments. We have tried to 
hammer the enemy into a confession of sin and into a 
state of grace, not realizing that for this purpose 
machine guns and asphyxiating gas are no adequate 
instruments. Though we cannot win this war with- 



24 THE END OF THE WAR 

out arms, we cannot win it by arms alone. The con- 
sequence of our exclusive preoccupation with the 
war tends to obscure the very purposes for which 
it is fought, ^with the result that the ideal victory, 
which we seek, eludes us. 

This is true of our enemies and our allies as of our- 
selves. The simple faith of 1914 is gone. In Ger- 
many millions now perceive that they were enrolled 
in this conflict by a conscription of lies and that the 
real objects of their exalted rulers were different 
from those avowed. They begin to doubt the wis- 
dom and justice of invading Belgium, of submarine 
warfare and the bombarding of peaceful cities ; and 
a few are wondering whether a German victory 
might not be a victory over Germany. The chains 
fastened upon Belgium would clank upon German 
ankles, for foreign aggression means unfreedom at 
home. Similarly, though in a lesser degree, the 
Allied peoples are beginning to dread too complete 
a victory. What advantage will there be in a mere 
overpowering of Germany? The German menace 
will be gone, but new menaces will have been created. 
Crush Germany to place Italy on the East Adriatic 
and the seeds are sown for a fresh war between 
Italy and Serbia and their respective allies, a war 
potentially as destructive as that under which we 
now live. Dismember Austria, split up that loose 
aggregation into a larger Balkans, and what is the 
permanent gain to England or France ? Again, what 



THE ELUSIVE VICTORY 25 

new wars are to be staged by the Peace Conference 
in Asia Minor? Everywhere dangers spring up like 
armed men from the ground. Everywhere victory 
promises to create new warring nations, young, un- 
wise, over-confident, over-ambitious, ruthless. Such 
a victory is no victory. Divide all conquered terri- 
tories according to the clashing desires of the flushed 
Allies and you have a state of Europe and of the 
world, no better than that from which men sought to 
escape in the insane venture of 1914. 

Humankind is proverbially disregardful of dis- 
tant dangers and Europe might be willing to pur- 
chase immunity from immediate aggression at the 
risk of a greater peril fifty years hence. But the 
menace is far more proximate. In 1912 the Balkan 
States declared war against Turkey upon the basis 
of a division of conquered territories more carefully 
considered than that which today binds the Allies; 
within a year they were at war among themselves. 
Can the Allies, in the event of their success, surely 
hold together in the precarious days of victory, while 
distributing territories newly acquired? Let Ger- 
many lay down her arms — is peace then assured? 
In a division of spoils there is no true harmony. 
What Italy wants Serbia wants. We can imagine 
the ironic laughter of the defeated Central Powers if 
at the final grand inquest the victorious Allies split 
upon the rock of clashing expansions, and each 
courted the aid of the German victim. For unless 



26 THE END OF THE WAR 

some new principle is evoked, other than that of giv- 
ing to each what has been promised to each, the di- 
vision will be made according to the strength of the 
respective victorious nations, according to the Bal- 
ance of Power within the Alliance, and in case of 
conflict the unsuccessful group may appeal to the 
victim to redress the balance. 

It is a discouraging outlook, a vista of ever new 
dangers, a dread that the world will escape from the 
consuming fire of this war only to fall into hotter 
conflagrations. A real victory, a victory of peace, 
eludes us. And when we inquire why it eludes us we 
see that we, the Allied nations, carry into the conflict 
something of that evil principle against which we 
fight. The war is against German militarism, ag- 
gression and imperialism, but the Allied nations are 
also militaristic, aggressive and imperialistic. Be- 
tween Germany and Japan there is little to choose in 
the matter of imperialistic ambition; between the 
autocratic Russia that was and the Germany that is 
there is nothing to choose. The war in its origin was 
an alignment of aggressive nations against aggres- 
sive nations. Moreover, in carrying on the war each 
combatant group has gained the adhesion of former 
neutrals by appealing to greed and ambition. The 
Allies made promises to Italy, Roumania and Greece, 
as Germany made promises to Bulgaria. The ce- 
ment of both alliances has been the very thing which 
caused the war. The Allies, fighting fire with fire, 



THE ELUSIVE VICTORY 27 

cannot be depended upon to control their own fire. 
A war for internationalism has been conducted by 
expedients opposed to the principle of interna- 
tionalism. 

Small wonder then that the world is disillusioned 
and war-weary, that the peoples ask themselves if 
wisdom and justice, moderation and tolerance are 
not more likely to solve problems than is the clash 
of brutal armies, let loose by stupid, if astute, diplo- 
mats. No wonder that tens of millions are seeking 
a way out of the banal slaughter to a victory that 
will not be empty and to a peace that will not be 
transient. 

In this search they are everywhere impeded. 
They cry "peace, peace," meaning thereby a settle- 
ment that is lasting and just, but the echo answers 
" there is no peace. " Those who desire terms which 
will make for progress and civilization find their 
efforts frustrated by two groups, by sincere, dog- 
matic pacifists, who desire immediate peace on any 
terms, and by equally sincere bitter-enders, jusqu'd 
boutistes, who are either imperialists, conscious or 
unconscious, or mere instinctive haters, loving the 
war more than the peace that is to be gained. The 
first group, if successful, would pluck the fruit be- 
fore it was ripe ; the second would fight on until the 
fruit was rotten. 

To the irreconcilable pacifist the war has brought 
an endless series of disillusionments. He has an in- 



28 THE END OF THE WAR 

vincible repugnance to warfare, not because he is a 
coward (on the contrary he is often fanatically 
brave) but because in him the tribal instinct is weak. 
He tends to believe in the inherent goodness and 
reasonableness of men. Often he is a pacifist and a 
non-resister because he is a Christian; more often 
he is a rationalist holding fast to reason and dis- 
trusting instinct. He is not objective; few extrem- 
ists are. He is not bound by conclusions drawn 
from history, for he looks to the future and believes 
implicitly in the revolutionary conversion of whole 
peoples. He holds to his dogma that nothing can 
be gained by war. The nearer the war the less par- 
donable. 

The dogmatic pacifist has seen the ground drift 
from beneath his feet. In the beginning he hoped 
that all nations would be reasonable ; they were not. 
He hoped that non-resistance would evoke non- 
aggression; it did not. He believed that the sober 
reason as well as the economic and cultural inter- 
ests of the world would prevent nations from going 
to war ; they did not. Even in the midst of the gen- 
eral conflagration he believed that a semi-isolated 
nation, like the United States, could remain out of 
the war, could maintain a solitaire peace; he has 
discovered that it could not. He has seen great peo- 
ples, ardently desiring peace, continue to fight as 
though driven by an invisible maleficent god. 

These disillusionments have confused the judg- 



THE ELUSIVE VICTORY 29 

ment, if they have not altered the convictions of the 
pacifist. Though he at first held that we in America 
should preserve an oasis of peace, and not add to the 
universal frenzy, he now discovers, when it comes to 
a question of ending the war, that peace is more than 
a mere cessation of fighting. It is a thing of difficult 
terms and conditions; a thing easier broken than 
made. 

To the militarist also the war has been disillusion- 
izing. In the beginning he thought of it as a mere 
conflict of arms and as a chance for valour and dis- 
tinction in the ''imminent deadly breach." There 
was something mystical, romantic and sentimental 
in his concepton. War was utterly different from 
the dead monotony of industrial life, with its glut- 
tonous production of standardized goods, its hum- 
drum collocation of grimy men in grimy factories, 
its plethoric endless heaping up of commodities. 
With the outbreak of hostilities all that would be 
over. To his confusion the war turns out to be 
nothing but the same industrial process in a differ- 
ent form. He discovers that not armies but fac- 
tories give the decision. Back of the soldiers stand 
the same grimy workers. The Brigadier-Generals 
in their resplendent uniforms are supplanted by 
manufacturers, merchants, bankers and advertising 
men, for the war has proved that war is business, 
and that military efficiency is useless without eco- 
nomic efficiency. Success in war depends upon the 



30 THE END OF THE WAR 

identical men and processes as does success in peace. 
As a consequence the military man of the old type 
is disappointed. 

Yet though pacifists and warriors are alike dis- 
illusioned, the war drags on. Men die on the battle- 
field and women and children and old people die at 
home. Food becomes scarce, fuel scarcer and the 
whole industrial machine creaks. The birth-rate 
falls; the death rate rises. Tuberculosis spreads 
through vast sections of the populations and vene- 
real diseases make fearful ravages. Everywhere 
are sick who cannot be tended, and weak who die un- 
necessarily. The nations, not comprehending each 
other, vainly strive for a mutual understanding that 
will relieve them from this excruciating agony. 
Then failing to reach any end or attain any concord 
they listen to the counsel of despair, " Fight on, you 
peoples; cut your throats, lose your lives and with 
them your doubts and qualms and hesitations. 
There is peace in death on the battlefield; there is 
peace in the insensate struggle itself, in which men 
cease to think, and mechanically shoot at an unseen 
enemy; as much automata as are the machine guns 
under their hands." 

It is as though we were driven by an inner impulse 
to mass suicide. Whoever seeks a rational escape 
from the slaughter is exposed to a merciless fire 
from the rear, to appeals to hatred, revenge, nation- 
alistic gain. Constantly we are told not to look 



THE ELUSIVE VICTORY 31 

within but outward to the enemy. All the suffering 
is attributed to the foe and not to the struggle itself. 
If the loved ones at home starve, the enemy is at 
fault, not the war. If fathers, husbands, sons die on 
distant fields, it is the enemy who has killed them, 
not the war. In each country we forget that war is 
the opponent and remember only a grinning, con- 
temptuous foe. Those who have something to gain 
or nothing to lose from the conflict insist on a mere 
fighting. So also do those who have forsworn 
thought "for the duration of the war." They urge 
the nation to grasp that ever-elusive victory, to gain 
by just a little more effort the balm that is to salve 
all wounds, to save itself from the last unutterable 
calamity of destruction. They demand that the 
nation fight that "these honoured dead shall not 
have died in vain." Foolish, vainglorious hope. 
More millions may die and more and more millions, 
and yet die in vain. For unless the war is rational- 
ized, spiritualized, saved from gross corrupting ele- 
ments, unless it is fully harmonized with the new 
spirit struggling to be born, all who die, die in vain. 
Until then, those who cry for "peace, peace," even 
though the military victory be won, must be answered 
"there is no peace." 

Could there be a more striking illustration of our 
tragic incapacity to rise above a fighting clan spirit 
to a view of humanity in its world relations'? The 
war lasts because we, like our foes, cannot put our- 



32 THE END OF THE WAR 

selves in the enemy's place, cannot view the world 
from his standpoint, or test our ideals by his needs. 
We do not concede to him a common humanity or a 
common rationality, but see in him only the brute 
and moral idiot. We close our ears to what he has 
to say, as he closes his ears, and both sides hurl 
threats across the national boundaries. The loose 
curses of some unrepresentative Englishman or 
Frenchman, printed in large type in German papers, 
shut the mouths and consciences of patriotic Ger- 
mans, clamouring for a democratic peace. People in 
Britain or America, who stretch out their hands in 
the dark to feel the friendly touch of peace-lovers in 
enemy lands, are struck by a Beventlow or von Tir- 
pitz, and are silenced. In these circumstances there 
is no peace. 

For the peace that is desired, the only peace 
worthy of the name or worth fighting for, is more 
than a pact between diplomats coming to the rescue 
of tired warriors. What is needed is a constructive 
peace, that will mean the progress of humanity, not a 
peace of subjugation nor a peace precedent to a new 
war. To such a true peace all the war irreconcilables 
of all countries are unitedly opposed. For these 
Maxses and Barres and Eeventlows, though revil- 
ing each other, are true allies. Theirs is a curious 
unconscious internationalism. Leagued together for 
war, imperialism and subjection, they are the real 
censors both of democratic speech and thought. 



THE ELUSIVE VICTORY 33 

They keep the flame alive, arousing for ever the war 
spirit at home and abroad. Against these strutting 
little men, with their vicarious heroism and their 
prestige manufactured in enemy lands, the advocates 
of an honourable peace struggle ineffectually. For 
these little war-makers, though not intrinsically pow- 
erful, represent the vast unreason of the world. 

Thus the nations long for a true peace and fight 
on. Great is the contagion of war, and so near lies 
the fighting spirit to our primitive instincts, and so 
easy is the refuge from the task of solving prob- 
lems to the thoughtless routine of battle, that one 
nation after another is dragged into the contest. 
Finally the United States, the last great neutral, was 
forced into the war. 

There was no way out. The struggle was on 
whether we were in or not, and our participation 
seemed to promise the end. It was for us, we be- 
lieved, to resolve the problem, to untie the knot that 
had resisted Europe's efforts. To this task we 
brought men, munitions and money, and also a new 
spirit. We wanted no conquests or indemnities, 
nothing but an honourable permanent peace. War- 
weary even before we entered the war, we strove to 
be disinterested, to fight without hatred and with- 
out ambition. We were literally fighting for peace. 

Thus America became the chief hope of the 
world's peace. We were cast for this role not be- 
cause we were better people than Europeans — we 



34 THE END OF THE WAR 

were neither better nor worse — but simply because 
our safe geographical and economic position not only 
permitted us to develop ideals of internationalism 
but also took from us any powerful selfish interest in 
the conflict. As peace-makers we had an advantage 
over other great Powers. 

We had a corresponding disadvantage. As a 
nation we were ignorant of those complex historical 
and political problems of Europe, those intimate 
repulsions and inherited prejudices out of which 
wars arise. We knew little about Russia, less about 
Austria-Hungary, still less about the Balkan situa- 
tion, and our ignorance concerning the intricate prob- 
lems of Asia Minor was almost complete. Before 
the war few Americans had even heard of the Bag- 
dad Railway. Disregarding these problems we be- 
lieved that peace could be maintained by keeping 
things as they were and we never asked ourselves 
whether things could be kept as they were. Ignoring 
their difficulties and their temptations we felt a con- 
tempt for nations which sought to fight out problems, 
not realizing that in like circumstances we too should 
have fought. We thought of peace as a self-regulat- 
ing device, as a thing natural and good and easy, and 
of any people that broke the peace as a self-confessed 
malefactor. 

Since then we have learned much. We have in- 
vestigated the rotting foundations upon which peace 
in the past has been built and we have come to rec- 



THE ELUSIVE VICTORY 35 

ognize that in some cases the peace-breaker is 
blessed. We have learned that not every peace will 
do ; that peace is a highly perishable integument, to 
be adjusted or fitted, so to speak, to the needs of 
peoples, to the spread of ideas, ideals, interests, an- 
tagonisms ; that it must grow with the growth of the 
nations it holds together. It is not a glass case, 
rigid and fragile, but a living container, a web, 
of the nature of the things it holds, growing, chang- 
ing, alive — and mortal. It is a condition, good, 
bad, improving, degenerating. It is a part of the 
enveloping atmosphere of the nations, and the na- 
tions may grow up healthy in its atmosphere or they 
may stifle and die. 

We have also learned that no nation, nor all 
nations together, can proclaim "Let there be Peace" 
and there will be peace. For that peace which the 
world desires is an organic and vulnerable thing, 
which must grow out of the ideals and passions of 
men, which must be better or worse, which must die 
day by day and be renewed day by day, as our skin 
dies and is renewed. We have only begun to learn 
the vast toxicology of peace ; the virulent, recondite 
poisons that destroy it, poisons not placed there by 
wicked men but, like fatigue germs, generated by the 
international body itself. We find the enemy of 
peace to be not Germany alone but also those dis- 
tractingly difficult questions, which Peace must con- 
front and answer or be herself destroyed. Our own 



36 THE END OF THE WAR 

pat replies of three years ago, as we now realize, 
were no answers, but mere evasions. We have 
studied and learned though we are still ignorant. 
So is the rest of the world. The blind lead the blind ; 
the ignorant teach the ignorant; the passionate 
preach to the passionate the virtues of peace. 

Disheartening? Surely. Yet so the world has 
always been governed and the race survived. To- 
day if our difficulties are intricate we have at least 
a broader basis, in a new world created under our 
feet, upon which to build for the future. More men 
and more women than ever before are striving not 
for any peace but for one that is true and perma- 
nent and just. The task of attaining such a peace is 
paralyzingly difficult, but we hope and believe that it 
is not impossible. 

But to attain it requires a larger spirit than to 
fight a war. It requires broader sympathies, a 
clearer vision, a greater faith and a nobler charity. 
The problem is no less than the planning of the 
world, the provision of a place in the sun for all the 
nations (including our enemies), the evening of the 
path over which all peoples in their daily arduous 
lives must pass. The peace to be attained must be a 
peace that lays the foundations upon which a world 
society may be built. Such a peace does not come 
automatically, nor is it attained by fighting, which 
can achieve only the removal of some of the ob- 
stacles. The end of the war does not of itself 



THE ELUSIVE VICTORY 37 

bring peace, just as the battle won does not bring the 
victory; all that war assures us is a partial cleaning 
of the slate upon which a new message may be writ- 
ten. What that message will be depends upon what 
spirit animates the peoples who are to do the writing. 
It is in something of this mood and with the sense 
that she is a nation chosen by circumstances to lead, 
that America must approach the problem of world 
peace. The task comes to us more immediately than 
ever before. Plunged into the World War to sink or 
rise with the other nations, we may either fight on to 
the elusive victory that is defeat, or may strive by in- 
telligence and a true spirit to attain to that moral 
victory without which this war is an unmeaning 
curse. 



CHAPTER II 

PACIFISTS AND PATRIOTS 

Superficially there could have been no more star- 
tling volte face than that of America in April, 1917. 
We had just re-elected Mr. Wilson, who had "kept 
us out of war ' ' ; immediately afterwards, and under 
his leadership, we entered the war. 

Since then we have quickly learned to despise our 
former attitude, and men who have recently boasted 
of their staunch pacifism now hold that point of view 
to be obnoxious and contemptible. Yet to those who 
look beneath the surface the basic impulse which 
caused us to fight was the same that had long kept 
us from iighting. It was in the main idealism which 
thrust us in as it had once held us aloof. Beneath 
our sudden change in policy lay a perfect continuity 
in sentiment and conviction. 

To understand our present attitude and to for- 
mulate an American policy, we must understand and 
emotionally experience that strong sentiment out 
of which our actions flowed. For we are today and 
will be tomorrow essentially what we were a year 
ago. A traditional popular impulse manifests it- 
self differently under varying conditions, but itself 
does not quickly change. Consequently we approach 

38 



PACIFISTS AND PATRIOTS 39 

the end of the war with much the same instinctive 
reactions, with much the same tenacious but undi- 
rected idealism as in the days in which we held our- 
selves aloof from the conflict. 

It was not to be anticipated that our present Al- 
lies 1 should regard our past abstention as heroic or 
indeed as anything but materialistic and selfish. 
Themselves bearing the brunt of a desperate strug- 
gle, they naturally believed that all neutrals were 
careless of great moral issues and shortsighted in 
their national egoism. America especially was de- 
nounced, since of all neutrals she was the strongest 
and most prosperous. It was inevitable that all the 
ancient accusations against Yankee callousness 
should be raised against us. 

These accusations fitted in with the traditional 
dispraise of America. We were held to be the most 
unidealistic of nations — in our land birds had 
no song, flowers no scent, and men no souls. To 
myriads of Europeans our life seemed cold, clear, 
hard, without shade or colour or atmosphere, un- 
romantic, unmysterious. They found in us a narrow 
and ill-informed rationalism, a grotesque emphasis 
upon the practical, a materialistic self-seeking. 
Our cis-Atlantic civilization was styled gaunt, 
ugly, monotonous, clamourous. Americans were the 

* Technically America is not an ally of Great Britain, France and 
Italy, but merely an associate or co-belligerent. For the sake of 
convenience, however, it is often better to use the word "ally" since 
it corresponds with general usage. 



40 THE END OF THE WAR 

slaves of a tyrannical money instinct. We had no 
soul roots in a distant past, no long national conti- 
nuity. How could one expect idealism from a mere 
accidental assemblage of transplanted humans! 

Doubtless, as our critics allege, we have missed 
some of the virtues and much of the charm inhering 
in the. more ripely developed nations whose history 
runs back to an ancient folk childhood. Our people, 
coming from many sources, have had their dim 
lights extinguished in the glare of American life. 
We speak of the American crucible, but, in a true 
sense, nations are not chemically fused but grow as 
do the plants, slowly and obscurely. All this makes 
us different. 

Yet it is only the less sympathetic European 
observer who misses the deep note of idealism in 
American character. The popular misconception 
arises because in America so much of our spiritual 
life seems flat and arid, because we have not been 
chastened by suffering, but have always been chil- 
dren of plenty and of a strenuous uncomfortable 
comfort. Our idealism itself bears the traces of its 
derivation in being cheerful, self-conscious and 
somewhat pragmatic, worshipping the thing that is 
to be and ignoring what was. It is, like ourselves, 
mechanical and rationalistic, holding fast to steam, 
electricity, power and bigness. It is the idealism of 
a wealthy society of jostling, unsqueamish men, 
above all, an idealism of success. It is a vent for all 



PACIFISTS AND PATRIOTS 41 

those impulses which are not used up in our struggle 
for wealth, and it adopts unconsciously the methods 
and spirit of that struggle. In this check-book ideal- 
ism, the widow's mite is less regarded than the mil- 
lionaire's donation, and the one sheep less than the 
ninety and nine. It is the idealism of a people sat- 
isfied, perhaps over-satisfied with itself, giving of its 
plenty and determined to raise the world to what it 
considers its own level. There is in it little humility 
but much good will, good sense and practical wis- 
dom. Moreover, it is an idealism with its feet on the 
ground, an idealism which works, which enters into 
the core of our day-by-day life and powerfully influ- 
ences our actions and decisions. 

It was this unromantic and perhaps unlovely ideal- 
ism which was enlisted a year ago in the effort to 
keep America out of the war. It was a powerful 
ideal motive drawn from the brief traditions of 
American history, and buttressed by economic, polit- 
ical and geographical considerations. It was a mo- 
tive that was rooted in a belief that men are inher- 
ently good, that the free man is the good man and 
the good citizen. It believed theoretically in an 
equality, liberty and fraternity, transcending na- 
tional boundaries. Intensely democratic, it de- 
manded the equalization of opportunities, though it 
narrowly conceived of equality as an equal chance 
to compete under unequal conditions. Its faith was 
strong in the right of a nation or a people to self- 



42 THE END OF THE WAB 



government. It disbelieved in repression, regimen- 
tation, rigid discipline, abject respect for the pub- 
lished law. u Do not obey the law too much," ad- 
vised the great American prophet, Wall Whitman. 

This attitude led. and still leads, to opposition to 
war. The liberal does not believe in propaganda by 
force. He distrusts the arbitrament of battle much 
as he distrusts duelling. To the American, more- 
over, a belief in the efficacy of peace has been all 
the more natural since his nation was never called 
upon to right a serious foreign war. In a fluid 
society in which there was elbow-room and the right 
to use one's elbows, in which a man might easily 
change his heme, city, trade, or wife, it was easier to 
move than tight. We had no fighting traditions and 
no specialized fighting class, no Sd»iurai and no 
Junkers. Consequently, our patriotism was strongly 
pacific 

This American pacifism was on the whole conde- 
scendingly benevolent. Believing piously in our 
own wisdom and good fortune, we experienced a mis- 
sionary desire to spread our virtue to foreign coun- 
tries. We believed that we were, or were to become, 
the most inspiring nation in the world, and that we 
gratefully owed it to Divine Providence to bring to 
other nations the blessings that were ours. We must 
spread our civilization by example and free gift. 
But if there was a touch of Pharisaism in our atti- 
tude, there was also a deeply sincere and generous 






PACD RIOTS Id 

emotion, WTe i 
world, 
ii to ridicule this attitude, I in it an 

intellectual unripeness and a blindness to complex 

ailed knowledg< far 

too simple in our hyp- ,minary 

in our judj rope as 

merely a more den 
failed to grasp the infinil 
natii .out their loi 

tile juxtaposition, with their martial orti- 

fied by the constant need of self-defence. We were 
inclined to pass a hasty equal judgment upon all 

batants, as doe.-, the lazy pol 

avestigs te a p -e. But all 

this intellectual immatur. a natural. If our 

people a failed to bring to this problem a 

full and mind, other neutral- and com- 

batant:-; equally failed. A.-; one look:-, deeper and en- 
itnation from a moral rather than an in- 
tellectual point of &ur attitude, fairly radiat- 
ing good-will, was far from ridiculous. It was an 

rt to apply to the relations between nations cer- 
tain obvious; moral formula.-. J: the formulae v. 
too simple, the effort none the less lay in the line 
future prog 

iT- f mind a 1 as far from being universal. 

Not I 'A'ar from a purely 

-al, financial point of vj< j vr and millions of otr .ndif- 
ferent. 



44 THE END OF THE WAR 

Obviously this idealism in the first instance held 
the United States to non-intervention. Nations and 
men tend to discover a deep moral justification for 
whatever lies in their interest, but apart from the 
obvious benefit to us of non-interference, there was 
reason to believe that such a do-nothing policy 
would also inure to the ultimate advantage of 
Europe. Our underlying thought was that, as a 
combatant, we should lose not only moral prestige, 
but also a disinterestedness without which we could 
never become impartial mediators. The ambition to 
settle the war obsessed the nation. It was in this 
hope that President Wilson adjured us to remain 
neutral even in thought, and in this spirit he made 
his famous declaration that a nation may be too 
proud to fight. We did not seem to recognize that 
in our efforts to preserve a rigidly neutral atti- 
tude we were sacrificing our right even to pass a 
moral judgment. Thus the President refused to 
state his opinion concerning the morality of the Bel- 
gian invasion and made no protest against German 
atrocities in Belgium or Russian atrocities in Gali- 
cia. In this abstention, moreover, he was supported 
by the general sentiment. "Why protest," asked 
Americans, "since we do not intend to back up our 
protests by force? A protest will do no good and 
will destroy our chance to become the peacemaker." 

Naturally our internal racial divisions emphasized 
the necessity of neutrality and peaceful abstention 



PACIFISTS AND PATRIOTS 45 

from European quarrels. We were no longer re- 
quired to be neutral because of weakness and we had 
long ceased to believe that the democratic institutions 
of the United States needed protection from the 
"despotic European system." Neutrality had be- 
come a policy of convenience; a confirmation of an 
economic process by which American interests were 
centered in the home territory. But our attitude 
towards our immigrants confirmed our unwilling- 
ness to interfere as a belligerent in European wars. 
We were the refuge of the world, the one country in 
which war-weary citizens of all the nations could 
drown their ancient embittered animosities in the 
new and unifying aspirations of American life. To 
these immigrants from war-threatened nations, 
moreover, we felt ourselves bound to offer surcease 
of warfare that they might forget the unhappy days 
in their native land. Thus and thus only could we 
create a United States of Europe on American soil. 
If we waged war against one or another of the Euro- 
pean peoples we should only rekindle old hatreds. 
The bitter feelings aroused in America during the 
first two years of the European War, the only half- 
suppressed warfare of invective between American 
partisans of the Allied and of the German cause, 
seemed to us a forecast of the much deadlier conflict 
that was to be feared in the event of any actual par- 
ticipation by the United States. To attack Ger- 
many, we believed, would be to de-Americanize the 



46 THE END OF THE WAS 

Germans in our midst. If we adopted a policy ad- 
verse to Italy, Austria-Hungary, Sweden or Great 
Britain, we should stir up new racial antipathies 
within our borders. Our internal peace, our integ- 
rity as a composite nation, depended upon our neu- 
trality. The better part of wisdom was to remain, 
we thought, a friend to all nations and an ally of 
none. 

It soon became obvious, however, that our policy 
of non-intervention led to difficulties. The role of 
receptive peacemaker was hardly dignified and we 
were the alternate victim of all combatants. Our 
failure to repel the aggression of one group led to 
attacks by the other, and as the months passed our 
neutrality evaporated. We were hated, distrusted 
and coldly despised by both sides. Germany claimed 
that we were aiding the Allies ; British and French 
publicists intimated that we were subtly pro-Ger- 
man. 

To what lengths this suspicion of America went 
is revealed by the attitude of one of the more violent 
of British imperialists, Mr. L. J. Maxse. In an arti- 
cle appearing in the National Review of February, 
1917, entitled, " 'Ware Washington," Mr. Maxse 
claimed that the United States was Germany 's secret 
ally, that a war between those two countries was 
practically impossible, but that a war with England 
would be immensely attractive to Americans. "It 
is common ground," he said, "that had the Pan- 



PACIFISTS AND PATRIOTS 47 

German program materialized and the Mailed 
Fist been triumphantly installed from Petrograd to 
Calais the United States would have preserved a 
scrupulous neutrality based on excess profits. But 
from the moment failure overtook Germany at Ver- 
dun and on the Somme, American action became in- 
evitable, because German failure meant British suc- 
cess, and their ingrained jealousy of this country 
would preclude 'our American kinsmen' remaining 
quiet while we ' came into our own. ' ' ' " The fall of 
France," he asserted, "the fall of Russia, the fall 
of Italy would have found American altruists look- 
ing the other way, as did the fate of Belgium, Serbia, 
Montenegro, Roumania, and Poland. Any catas- 
trophe to the British Empire would have aroused 
unconcealable glee from the Atlantic to the Pa- 
cific." * In the same manner and to an even greater 
extent our quasi-neutrality exposed us to the gibes 
and the violent abuse of German critics. 

It must be conceded that our policy of theoretical 
neutrality completely failed, and that in our efforts 
to apply a few moral formulae to the complex and 
embittered European situation we barely escaped 
appearing irresolute and even ridiculous. We fol- 
lowed no one lead and carried out no one consistent 
policy. Had we really wished to defend the prin- 
ciple of neutrality we should have formed a League 
of Neutrals, and organized the combined neutral 

i The Rational Review, Vol. 6S, p. 810. 



48 THE END OF THE WAR 






strength to enforce our decisions. Had we desired 
to exercise a moral influence we should have boldly 
passed judgment upon such open violations of inter- 
national law as the invasion of Belgium, and pre- 
pared ourselves for an eventual vindication of such 
judgments. Nor did we, during the first two and a 
half years, take really effective steps towards bring- 
ing about peace upon the basis of a firm internation- 
alism. If after mobilizing our economic and mili- 
tary forces we had put pressure upon both groups of 
belligerents to force them to state terms, we should 
perhaps have aided in the clarification of the issues 
and in progress towards a mutual understanding. 

Actually our laissez-faire attitude towards the 
war, our policy of waiting to be called upon as peace- 
maker, led insensibly to a conservative, tepid and 
constantly shifting program, and in the end to a 
seeming pettiness in promoting small commercial 
interests while ignoring vaster moral interests. We 
kept silent about Belgium, but protested vehemently 
in behalf of American lard. The European infer- 
ence was obvious. 

"If the man who turnips cries 
Cry not when his father dies 
'Tis a proof that he had rather 
Have a turnip than his father." 

But the inference was false. We did not care 
more for American lard than for human rights, al- 



PACIFISTS AND PATRIOTS 49 

though as a matter of tradition we protested about 
the first, while we were inhibited by our fundamental 
policy towards the war from saying a word in behalf 
of the second. 

It was not cowardice on our part, nor timidity, 
nor callousness. Our policy of non-interference, 
though unintelligent and uninspired, was the result 
not only of an old tradition coming into conflict with 
a new state of the world, but of our strong idealistic 
belief that we could aid internationalism by doing 
nothing, and our hope that we could gain the friend- 
ship of both groups of belligerent nations, and thus 
gently bring them to a common peace, by studiously 
refraining from giving offence to either. If we stag- 
gered from one error to another and from one pro- 
gram to another, if in the end we entered the conflict 
abruptly under sudden provocation as though we 
had stumbled into the war, the cause of our vacilla- 
tion was in the main a not ungenerous aspiration. 
We longed for a universal peace, in which men would 
no longer kill, and though all other swords in the 
world dripped with blood, ours at least should be 
clean. 

Such was the pacifist patriot attitude of America 
in November, 1916. Yet in April, 1917, the United 
States "to make the world safe for democracy" was 
engaged in a great war with Germany. 



CHAPTER III 

THE CONVERSION OF AMERICA 

The entrance of America into the war raised in 
many minds a seeming dilemma. Why did we take 
part in April, 1917, and not in August, 1914? If it 
was not a war for democracy, why were we in ; if it 
was, why had we not been in from the beginning? 

Though we are now at war, and war inhibits a true 
freedom of thought, yet as the foundations of our 
morality are concerned, we must face this problem 
honestly. What figure have we cut in this titanic 
shock in which we have allowed France to bleed and 
Serbia to be crushed, permitted Armenians to be 
slaughtered and suffered the democratic nations, in- 
cluding Australia and our neighbour Canada, to 
make supreme sacrifices, while we withheld even our 
approbation? Why did we not protest even after 
the fact against the invasion of Belgium? How can 
we today justify our minatory letters to England con- 
cerning our corn and beef and pig-iron? If this was 
a war for democracy, as the Allies claimed and as we 
today claim, were we not culpably blind or viciously 
neutral? — knowing and not caring, like "that caitiff 
choir who were not rebels, nor were faithful to God, 
but were for themselves." 

50 



THE CONVERSION OF AMERICA 51 

As we look this dilemma over, however, we shall 
find that there is a wide space between the horns. 
There were reasons for our participation in 1917 
which were absent before. In the early stages of 
the war we believed that we had no responsibility 
for wars in Europe, and at all events did not con- 
sider this conflict as in any true sense a war for 
democracy. We were free therefore to go in or stay 
out. Within three years, however, we had lost this 
liberty of choice. We no longer could decide 
whether to take sides but only which of two sides 
to choose. Moreover, as the issue now presented 
itself, the problem was not whether the war was al- 
ready a war for democracy, which we did not be- 
lieve, but whether by our participation it could be 
converted into a war for democracy. If by adher- 
ing to the Allies we could persuade their govern- 
ments to recede from their extreme and unjustified 
demands (of which we knew much and surmised 
more), we should make success in war a real victory 
for a democratic internationalism. 

Our moral right to remain aloof seemed to us 
indisputable. All through our history we had 
sought to remain neutral, even where our sym- 
pathies were strongly engaged. We had not inter- 
fered in behalf of Greece struggling against Turkish 
oppression nor in behalf of Hungary fighting against 
Austrian domination. Our official attitude towards 
Europe was not Quixotic nor even generous. Ours 



52 THE END OF THE WAR 

was a conservative, non-propagandistic, non-inter- 
fering diplomacy. There were cogent reasons for 
this policy of non-interference. We were weak; we 
wished Europe not to interfere with us, and we 
believed, quite properly, that our slack democracy 
was no match for the subtle European diplomacy, 
habituated for generations to all the intricacies of 
the Balance of Power. True, we occasionally failed 
to observe this rule of non-abstention, as when we 
made representations to Russia and Roumania in 
behalf of their Jews. On the whole, however, we 
sought to adhere to a policy limiting our diplomatic 
activity to those parts of the world in which that 
activity could be decisive. We were willing to sym- 
pathize with alien causes but not to fight for them. 
Nor did this American policy of not taking up 
cudgels in defence of oppressed nationalities and of 
broken treaties really differ from that of other na- 
tions. Great Britain had been no more willing to 
fight for the maintenance of the Korean Treaty, 
which she had guaranteed than was the United 
States, and what actually forced her to intervene 
in Belgium was a controlling and decisive interest 
in that country's neutrality. No mere sentimental 
regard for Belgians drove England into the war, 
any more than a sentimental regard for Serbians 
and Austrians brought Russia and Germany into the 
conflict. Belgium was Britain's flying buttress, as 
Austria was the flying buttress of Germany. 



THE CONVERSION OF AMERICA 53 

That the war did not appeal to all Americans as a 
war for democracy was due to the duality of its 
issues. On the one hand was the assertion of a cer- 
tain internationalism against the exaggerated and 
febrile nationalism of Germany; a ranging of politi- 
cal democracy, of respect for international law, and 
of a desire for international government against the 
enemy's disregard and distrust of these things. On 
the other hand there was a group of issues consist- 
ing of nationalistic demands, which violated the fun- 
damental principle of internationalism. The Allies, 
as accumulating evidence proved, were at war among 
themselves ; they fought against the things for which 
they fought. In each of the Allied nations high in- 
ternational ideals were in conflict with selfish nation- 
alistic plans. Which issue overweighed? The an- 
swer obviously was quantitative and difficult to make. 

To man.y Americans the preponderance seemed 
on the side of the nationalistic aims. We found 
both groups of nations selfish, were irritated at both. 
Undoubtedly the Junkertum was the stronghold of 
autocracy, and therefore the supreme enemy, but the 
spectacle of the Czar of Russia leading democracy 
to a victory over absolutism was ridiculous. We 
believed that Germany had precipitated the war, but 
in the long course of events leading up to the inevi- 
table declaration there had been so much aggression 
and duplicity on both sides that we were forced to 
reserve judgment. We trusted neither group. The 



54 THE END OF THE WAR 

aggressions against the Transvaal, Korea, Morocco, 
Persia, Egypt, Tripoli were too recent to allow us to 
believe that the Allies in the present war were meek 
nations overrun by arrogant tyrants. In Morocco 
not all the good faith was on one side; in Persia 
neither England nor Russia was blameless. The 
very fact that the war broke out in Serbia clearly re- 
vealed that some of its origins lay in gross nation- 
alistic impulses and in a struggle for prestige and 
power. 

While, therefore, we recognized a fundamental 
democratic purpose in the war, we believed that in 
no real sense did this ideal unite the Allied nations. 
The chief cement of the Alliance seemed to lie in 
fear, greed and nationalistic ambition, not in any 
conception of a true harmony among the nations of 
Europe. To militaristic and autocratic Japan, for 
example, the ideals of democracy meant little. She 
played her own game, hoping not for a speedy Allied 
victory but for a protracted struggle. To the Rus- 
sian autocracy the war reduced itself to specific 
imperialistic aims. Italy stood on the brink, bar- 
gaining with both sides, willing to be neutral or 
partisan, according to the price. Roumania was in 
like position. Even in Prance and England senti- 
ment was divided. Weighing the preponderant ele- 
ments in the minds of the hundreds of millions 
opposed to Germany, balancing the democratic, inter- 
national ideals against the desire for concrete and 



THE CONVERSION OF AMERICA 55 

sometimes unjustifiable nationalistic gains, we were 
forced to conclude that the war was not wholly a war 
for democracy. 

Given this state of mind and this judgment of the 
causes and tendencies of the war, we not unnaturally 
preferred the maintenance of our technical neutral- 
ity. Several factors, however, made this impos- 
sible. Forces stronger than our will drove us into 
the conflict. Indeed we were in the war long before 
we made our formal declaration. 

That we were forced may not at first glance be 
obvious. We seemed to have had an opportunity 
to maintain neutrality. As late as April, 1917, we 
might conceivably have raised the cry " Reparation 
after the war," pursuing a policy towards Germany 
like that towards England in the case of the Alabama 
claims. Actually, however, our only choice was 
either to defeat the Allies or attempt the defeat of 
Germany. 

The resulting declaration of war was merely the 
culmination in an unavowed participation which had 
been increasing for over two years. Powerful un- 
conscious forces had been driving us from neutrality 
to belligerency— a gradual process, divisible into 
three parts. First we were neutral, favouring the 
Allies in our hearts, but holding the balance of action 
even. The illuminating act of this period was the 
President's plea that we remain neutral in thought. 
The second stage was one of "benevolent neutral- 



56 THE END OF THE WAR 

ity," of unconscious belligerency. During this pe- 
riod we sent money and munitions to the Allies, re- 
sisted the German blockade, but did not effectively 
oppose the British blockade. The illuminating act 
of this period was our permission to Allied merchant- 
men to carry guns. Last stage of all, the declaration 
of war. 

We ourselves did not fully understand this drift 
of our policy, and throughout this gradual transition 
we find a curious retardation in the intellectual prog- 
ress of the nation. Our thought moved slower than 
our action. While helping the Allies, partly from 
inclination and partly from necessity, we sincerely 
protested our neutrality. At one moment Mr. Lan- 
sing refused merchantmen permission to arm, al- 
though we were already committed to a policy of 
fighting the submarines. Our leaders vaguely saw 
the drift to war, but strove against it; Mr. Wilson's 
peace proposals in December were an attempt to pre- 
clude the necessity for a war message in April. We 
were willing to accept any semi-reasonable settle- 
ment in Europe rather than ourselves take part in 
the contest. And this not from timidity. What re- 
strained us was a deep conservative instinct ; a jeal- 
ous desire to hold America apart from these strug- 
gles. We hesitated to commit our bark to untried 
waters. We wanted to live our old life, develop our 
democracy at home, protect with the aid of Latin 
America the isolation and immunity of the two 



THE CONVERSION OF AMERICA 57 

Americas. Not wishing to coerce other nations nor 
endure their coercion, preferring our independence 
narrow and free, to a wider, more exacting and more 
perilous interdependence, we were as regards Eu- 
rope separatist. Even as late as March, 1917, we 
sought to establish an armed neutrality instead of 
going to war. Anything but war. 

That our resistance was vain was through no 
fault of ours, nor in a larger sense through the 
specific inclination of any nation. It was the shrink- 
ing of the earth that flung us so violently against 
the European continent. We had little volition in 
the matter. 

What actually ended our neutrality long before we 
recognized that it had ended, was the supreme fact 
that the growth of industry, interlacing the nations 
of the world, had made a complete and real neutral- 
ity impossible. The traditional concept of neutral- 
ity had been based upon the idea of one independent 
and self-contained nation righting another independ- 
ent and self-contained nation, while the neutrals held 
the ring, kept the scales even, and did "nothing, 
neither way." But today there are no economically 
independent and self-contained nations. The change 
in the nature of war, with the ultimate dependence 
of each state upon its neighbours, completely alters 
the character of neutrality. A nation may be tech- 
nically neutral and yet trade ad libitum with either 
belligerent. It is, however, this peaceful trading 



58 THE END OF THE WAR 

which today is of enormous and even decisive influ- 
ence. A war of attrition is in large part economic; 
each belligerent seeks to secure goods from neutrals 
in order to save its own labour for war purposes 
while depriving antagonists of a like advantage. 
The war becomes a war for the trade, labour, sup- 
plies, capital and credit of neutrals. 

Here geographical position plays the controlling 
role. Denmark, Sweden, Holland and Switzerland 
may love Germany or hate her, but cannot in the cir- 
cumstances be anything but her partial economic al- 
lies, except by a policy which would make them ac- 
tual enemies. Sweden either sends Germany iron or 
does not; if she does, she aids Germany; if she does 
not, she injures her disastrously and invites repris- 
als. A belligerent today may be shattered by a neu- 
tral's economic action, which in peace time might be 
wholly unobjectionable. 

Of all neutrals America was incomparably the 
most important. Indeed, when the war had settled 
down to a test of endurance, American influence be- 
came decisive. The Allies, controlling the sea, could 
import munitions and food from America, and as a 
corollary borrow money. In other words, the United 
States automatically became the economic ally of the 
nations opposed to Germany. The German-Ameri- 
can farmer in Illinois freed a British agricultural 
labourer for the trenches; the Hungarian labourer 
at Wilkesbarre or Bridgeport unintentionally fought 



THE CONVERSION OP AMERICA 59 

against his native country. To Germany, on the 
other hand, no imports, and therefore no direct eco- 
nomic aid could come from America. Even had our 
antagonism to Germany been less strong, that coun- 
try would have borne the brunt of our economic 
alliance with her enemies. 

In this contingency Germany's policy seemed to 
her obvious. Either she must secure our goods or 
prevent the Allies from securing them. The former 
result she could accomplish only if we forced Great 
Britain to mitigate what we ourselves had declared 
to be an illegal blockade. She could accomplish the 
latter either by persuading us not to ship munitions 
or by means of submarine warfare. She must force 
us either to put pressure upon her enemies or else 
to permit her to put pressure upon them. 

In both efforts she failed. True, we protested 
against the British blockade, but as we did nothing 
but protest, and Great Britain was convinced that we 
would do nothing, the effect was almost nil. Nor 
did we stop our shipments of munitions, although a 
threat to do so might possibly have brought Great 
Britain to terms. On the other hand, not only did 
we protest against the submarine blockade, but we 
threatened war unless Germany desisted. Though 
technically, we were not really, neutral; ours was a 
" benevolent neutrality," a limited and uncon- 
scious belligerency. We threw our economic weight 
against Germany because our economic interests lay 



60 THE END OF THE WAR 

with the Allies, and because, for other compelling 
reasons, we wished the Allies to win or at least not 
to lose. 

Why we wished them to win reveals a force, at 
first weak but constantly growing, which in the end 
was to throw us into the battle line and alter our 
whole relation to the world. That force was a new 
extension, amplification and self-propagating ten- 
dency of American democracy. It was a repercus- 
sion of democracy. So long as we had to take sides, 
so long as economically we were forced to throw our 
weight on one scale or the other, we determined that 
America's influence should be in favour of what we 
considered democracy and against autocracy and 
militarism. 

Through all our decisions during the period of 
technical neutrality this principle may be observed 
to run. Ours, it is believed, was an excellent legal 
case. We could cite precedents for what we did and 
for what we did not do. To threaten Germany with 
war over the submarine issue was within our rights; 
it was doing only that which she would have done 
to us in reversed circumstances. On the other hand, 
though we had the right to insist that England ad- 
here to the old rules of the blockade, we also had the 
right not to insist. Actually, what determined those 
of our actions which were truly decisive was not a 
desire to defend neutral rights, in which direction we 
made little progress, but a determination to prevent 



THE CONVERSION OF AMERICA 61 

our inevitable and rather unwelcome influence from 
being cast against the Allies. Who was justified in 
any particular controversy, Germany or the Allies, 
was not the momentous factor; in the aggregate of 
her policies and ideals we held Germany to be wrong, 
or at least opposed to us. 

This is the escape from the seeming dilemma con- 
fronting our entrance into the war. We had not in- 
tended to sacrifice ourselves in order to secure a de- 
cision in Europe which in any case we believed would 
be obscured by the nationalistic aims of the Entente 
Powers. Only when it became obvious that we were 
already in the war and that we were forced to choose 
sides did we issue our declaration. We could 
either aid the Allies to defeat Germany or, by ac- 
cepting Germany's ultimatum, withhold the assist- 
ance without which the Allies would have been de- 
feated. 

There were several reasons which made our choice 
obvious. In the first place, we had learned much 
during the past two and a half years, and our early 
impressions of German policy derived from Liege, 
Louvain and Rheims had been reinforced by the 
Lusitania and other incidents. We began to dread 
the power and ulterior ambitions of a greater Ger- 
many. More or less vaguely we realized that Eng- 
land stood as a bulwark between us and this great 
continental military power, as France and Belgium 
stood between her and England. Our commercial 



62 THE END OF THE WAR 

expansion had more to fear from a successful Ger- 
many than from a successful Britain or France. 
While we discovered imperialistic ambitions on both 
sides we believed that the preponderance of respon- 
sibility, both for the war and for autocracy and mili- 
tarism, lay with Germany, and if imperialism were 
to triumph, we preferred a British to a German im- 
perialism. We felt that in taking our stand with 
the Allies we were contributing upon the whole to the 
hope of democracy and international peace, and 
in these we had both a sentimental and a material 
interest. 

There is another theory at variance with that 
just given concerning the reasons why the United 
States intervened. According to this theory large 
financial interests in America discovered that it 
would be profitable to have the United States enter 
the war and through their control of the press were 
able to create so strong a sentiment for belliger- 
ency that the government was forced to intervene 
as soon as Germany gave it an opportunity. On 
this hypothesis all our desire for internationalism 
and democracy was merely the sentimental covering 
for the crude economic interests of our unacknowl- 
edged but omnipotent financial rulers. 

This theory errs on the side of over-simplicity. 
It assumes an overwhelming preponderance of 
power on the part of our financiers. It presupposes 
a pure passivity on the part of the nation. 



THE CONVERSION OF AMERICA 63 

It cannot, of course, be denied that the economic 
forces pushing America towards war were less weak 
in 1917 than they had been two years before. A 
stupendous exportation from the United States to 
the Allied countries had created in this country an 
economic condition which would have been seriously 
damaged by a cessaton of that trade. Had we 
accepted the principle of the German blockade, 
which was our only alternative to war, the prices 
of food stuffs, cotton, steel and other products would 
have fallen and the result might have been a disas- 
trous commercial and financial crisis. 

It is doubtful whether most of our American 
farmers, tradesmen and wage-earners ever gave this 
question of economic advantages an hour's steady 
thought. Their consciously determining motives 
were of quite a different sort. The same is equally 
true of the majority of our financiers, even when they 
believed, rightly or wrongly, that their interests lay 
upon the side of war. Yet these economic interests 
were not, and never are, without their influence. 
Conditions had changed since the invasion of Bel- 
gium, and indeed since the sinking of the Lusitania. 
We had loaned large sums to the belligerent nations ; 
we had accumulated an exportable surplus of capi- 
tal, and had begun to think in terms of foreign trade 
and foreign investment. 

It does not follow that this is a Wall Street 
war because many financiers desired it. To jump 



64 THE END OF THE WAR 

from this premise to that conclusion is to ignore 
manifold non-economic influences, working upon our 
professional and other classes, the nation's idealism, 
the pent-up irritation at Germany's brutalities, the 
sympathies and antagonisms and fears of mil- 
lions of citizens. Yet the economic interests push- 
ing us towards the struggle have a direct bearing 
on the future conduct of the war. It would be 
stupid in us not to recognize that mundane and cal- 
culable motives merged with our idealism and still 
form a part of our war motive. If by victory we 
are to gain the things that most Americans really 
desire, if we are to know how to fight and on what 
terms to stop fighting, if we are to prevent the con- 
duct of the war and the resulting peace negotiations 
from being wrenched out of our hands by men with 
special group interests to serve, we must recognize 
this inmixture of the economic interests of financiers 
in the general body of motives, for the most part 
idealistic, with which we entered the fight. 

What specifically did our financiers, or at least 
certain of them, hope to gain from our participation? 

In the first place their loans to the Allies had al- 
most reached the maximum. The continuance of 
our profitable trade with the Allies depended upon 
England's ability to finance the payments, and as 
that nation could not continue to export gold, and as 
Americans would not buy many more European se- 
curities, American financiers welcomed any arrange- 



THE CONVERSION OF AMERICA 65 

ment by which our government would guarantee fu- 
ture obligations. If the United States loaned money 
to Russia at four per cent, and thereby enabled that 
country to place profitable orders in America, the 
operation benefited the vendors. Moreover, the 
huge military and naval expenditures which the 
American government would be compelled to make 
in the event of war would be of benefit directly to cer- 
tain corporations and indirectly to others. 

There were still other interests and still wider 
plans. To a few far-seeing men a successful par- 
ticipation seemed to offer an opportunity to extend 
American trade in alliance with England and at the 
expense of Germany. An even greater opportunity 
would be afforded for the profitable investment of 
the new exportable surplus of America, then already 
amounting to billions, and liable to be vastly in- 
creased in the future. If we refrained from partici- 
pation, the growing enmity and envy toward Amer- 
ica, manifested by the rival belligerents, might end 
in an adverse coalition which would deprive us forci- 
bly of all future investment opportunities. On the 
other hand, our aid to Great Britain in her extremity 
might easily lead to a profitable co-operation with 
that nation, in which our capital and her knowl- 
edge, experience and prestige would be united. We 
could lay the foundations for a vast, overpowering 
and ostensibly pacific imperialism. 

It would be idle to deny that such an imperialism 



66 THE END OF THE WAR 

would benefit our American financiers. The rise in 
wages, a rise likely to continue as a result of lessened 
immigration, tends to make future returns on Amer- 
ican capital invested at home somewhat smaller than 
in the past. On the other hand, could the united 
British and American financiers find a non-competi- 
tive field for investment in Russia, South America, 
Africa and Asia, where wages are low, the advan- 
tages would be obvious. Moreover, the mere ac- 
quisition of a powerful army and navy would not 
only render America secure from invasion, but 
would enable the United States to put pressure upon 
countries like Japan and thus open up the vast in- 
vestment field of China. Finally, apart from any 
direct advantage, many financiers probably desired 
a large army as a bulwark to property rights in 
general. An army was necessary for the war, but 
a war was equally necessary for an army. 

That these considerations were the sole determin- 
ing factor in deciding the belligerent attitude of our 
financial groups is improbable. Idealistic factors 
also worked upon them, such as patriotism, the de- 
sire for prestige abroad, oppositon to the German 
militaristic system and morality. Nor did the war- 
like attitude of our financiers determine the Nation's 
policy. In numerous cases the Administration had 
clearly demonstrated its unwillingness to permit 
either its foreign or domestic program to be dictated 
by financial groups. To cite only a few cases, Presi- 



THE CONVERSION OF AMERICA 67 

dent Wilson's refusal to endorse the Six-Power 
agreement with China, his resolutely pacific attitude 
toward Mexico, his treatment of the Filipinos, his 
consistent antagonism to Dollar Diplomacy, his atti- 
tude towards the LaFollette Shipping Bill, and 
finally his action in the threatened railway strike of 
1916 indicated anything but subservience to Wall 
Street influences. In the presidential election of 
1916 our financial interests were opposed to Mr. 
Wilson and there was no reason to believe that the 
action of the American government would be pri- 
marily influenced, if at all, by a conscious effort to 
do what the financiers desired. 

Motives and influences of a different sort were 
decisive. Our declaration of war was due upon 
the whole to a necessity, imposed upon us by the 
general situation, to take sides and upon a recogni- 
tion of the fact that we could not fight with Ger- 
many and could not help fighting with the Allies. 
Whatever Wall Street thought the average Ameri- 
can on the farms and in the offices and factories be- 
lieved that if we entered the conflict we must import 
into it the firm intention to aid in making our own 
democracy safe and in adding to the democracy of 
the world. 

This decision was enormously accelerated by an 
event which took place between the demission of the 
German Ambassador in February and the Declara- 
tion of War in April. The final impelling reason 



68 THE END OF THE WAR 

for this declaration was the Russian Revolution, 
which cast the influence of a great nation in favour 
of a true democratization of the war, and against a 
merely imperialistic use of victory. We could stand 
shoulder to shoulder with the peasants and workmen 
of Russia, whereas we could not without blushing 
have accepted the leadership of Nicholas Romanoff. 
The change in Russia gave body to our hope that we 
might succeed in making the conflict a war for de- 
mocracy and internationalism. 

For us today this ambition is still the overriding 
consideration. We must gain a measure of democ- 
racy and internationalism or go down to moral de- 
feat. 

Not only is this striving for internationalism 
necessary to the attainment of a moral victory, but 
it is actually essential to the winning of the war. 
We cannot succeed in this struggle without national 
unity and popular enthusiasm, and we cannot secure 
this unity and enthusiasm except upon a program 
of internationalism. 

What still holds many Americans from an enthu- 
siastic endorsement of our participation is the be- 
lief that no real national issue is involved, that the 
war is European in its causes, methods and ideals ; 
not American. Had Germany sent an army to Long 
Island, had she owned Canada or Mexico, countries 
at which we might have struck, the conflict would 
have gained in immediacy and proximateness. The 



THE CONVERSION OF AMERICA 69 

issues could not possibly appeal to the Iowa farmer, 
for example, as they appealed to the Norman peas- 
ant. The latter, born in the shadow of 1870, grow- 
ing up under a German menace, acutely suffering 
from each of the calculated atrocities inflicted on 
men of his blood in Belgium and France, met the 
German invasion with an instant, because slowly 
prepared, hatred. But all these interwoven strands 
of patriotic antagonism, found in the Norman, were 
necessarily absent from the Iowan. The Iowa 
farmer was not afraid for himself or his country, 
and would hardly have believed in a German inva- 
sion had it occurred. Though he condemned Em- 
peror William and von Tirpitz as he disapproved 
of Attila and Apollyon, he rather liked Karl 
Schmidt, who lived unobtrusively in the neighbour- 
ing township. 

Because of this obsolescent though still prevalent 
belief that we have little concern with Europe, it was 
difficult, even with the frankest discussion, to make 
the war's issues as clear as were those, for example, 
of 1861. The Civil War was patently almost tan- 
gibly American. Deeply rooted in a complex sec- 
tional antagonism, it sprang out of very intimate 
and vital repulsions. That war was long in prepa- 
ration and slow in approach. Therefore the cry, 
"The Union must be preserved," found a quite dif- 
ferent audience than does the slogan today that a 
world democracy is assailed by an East Prussian 



70 THE END OF THE WAR 

group, whose name we have not yet learned to pro- 
nounce. We must fight as best we can with this 
derived and relatively distant impulse. 

It is this derived impulse, however, that forms, 
and must continue to form, our reason for fighting. 
We cannot secure a real unity by an appeal to 
hatred. To create a sentiment of hate against the 
German and Austrian is far more difficult in the 
United States, and far more ineffective and injuri- 
ous, than it would be in England or France. There 
are too many people of these nationalities within 
the nation, people upon whose assistance or qui- 
escence we depend for victory. Moreover, an attack 
upon the people of German or Austrian birth or 
descent extends insensibly to people of Bulgarian, 
Swedish, Swiss and Dutch origin; it extends to the 
Jews; it tends to develop a general anti-alien atti- 
tude, a contempt for Hungarians, Poles, Slovaks, 
Italians and others. The appeal to hatred breaks 
down because it is too generalized and because the 
assailed groups are able to strike back in the polling 
booths. Such an appeal destroys instead of creating 
unity. To maintain a united front in this war we 
must refrain from race hatred, which does not in any 
case correspond with our traditions and instincts. 
We must justify the war by an appeal to American 
idealism and American traditions. 

This President Wilson has sought to do. In his 
war message he attempted to show that his proposal 



THE CONVERSION OF AMERICA 71 

to guarantee a European treaty, providing for a 
new international order, is not "a breach in either 
our traditions or our policy as a nation, but a fulfil- 
ment, rather, of all that we have professed or striven 
for." The freedom of the nations to be guaranteed 
is, he asserts, but the promise of the Monroe Doc- 
trine, written large ; a concert of democratic nations 
is no " entangling alliance"; the freedom of the seas 
has been long the aim of American diplomacy. 
"These are American principles, American poli- 
cies." In other words, our support, even by force 
of arms, of an international order in Europe is but 
an extended Americanism. 

It is in some such spirit, though with some mis- 
givings, that we break with our old tradition of 
aloofness from Europe to enter upon a new crusade. 
We stand like the emigrant who casts a last longing 
glance at the home about which cluster his youthful 
memories and then faces forward to the inconstant 
ocean beyond which lies the new hope. But each 
emigrant no doubt pictures his new home as merely 
the old home glorified, seeing the familiar and there- 
fore beautiful surroundings with all the old evils 
gone. 

Thus we leave our policy of isolation for a new 
policy of intervention in Europe. We leave behind 
our old Americanism to find abroad a new and 
broader Americanism; an Internationalism. Our 
most sanguine optimists believe that we are to repro- 



72 THE END OF THE WAR 

duce our Supreme Court in a Supreme Court of the 
Nations ; that we are to introduce our federal system 
to Europe, establish disarmament among nations as 
among our States, empty European frontiers of 
troops as our Canadian frontier is empty. We are 
to do this for Europe in return for all that Europe 
has done for us and in obedience to the same spirit 
that sends out our missionaries to Asia. We are to 
do it also in self-defence, for if we are to remain 
disarmed we must disarm Europe. We are going 
abroad to protect our own American democracy, as 
an emigrant may fare forth to new lands to earn 
the wherewithal to protect his own home. 

Such is the vision of idealists who have accepted 
the new doctrine. Tt is with this ideal that we join 
hands with our Allies seeking to destroy the hostile 
spirit of Prussian militarism, and to evoke the new 
spirit, by which the world is henceforth to be gov- 
erned. 



CHAPTER IV 

THE WAR AGAINST MILITARISM 

There is an apparent confusion in our claim that we 
are fighting "to make the world safe for democ- 
racy. ' ' 

We do not always mean the same thing by this 
luminous phrase. At one time we appear to be at- 
tacking the principle of autocracy as represented by 
the Kaiser and the undemocratic Prussian constitu- 
tion; at another moment we assail Prussia's mili- 
tarism, her insistence upon force, her policy of ter- 
rorization, the irresponsibility of her military or- 
ganization. From the charge of autocracy and mili- 
tarism the accusation shifts to a claim that Germany 
is quarrelsome and unreasonable, demanding vast 
rearrangements both in the colonial and the Euro- 
pean world. We emphasize the quality of this dan- 
ger, the principle of militarism; again we emphasize 
its magnitude, and oppose Germany because of the 
size and power she seeks to attain. We declare, for 
example, that the Berlin-Bagdad scheme will destroy 
Europe's Balance of Power and that Germany's 
neighbours will dwindle in the shadow of her vast 
empire and lose their initiative and independence. 

To know when we have achieved a real victory 

73 



74 THE END OF THE WAR 

in this war, and how to achieve it, we must define 
our purpose more clearly. We fight against Prus- 
sian autocracy ; are we then to continue the war until 
Germany completely changes her political system? 
Shall we reject all guarantees from her present gov- 
ernment? Will Germany consent to change under 
pressure or retain an imposed constitution after the 
pressure has been removed? Will a German democ- 
racy refrain from militarism and aggression? 
What are we attacking, a principle or a power, a 
political institution or a state of mind, autocracy, 
militarism or world dominion? And what is our 
aim? Are we seeking to reform Germany or protect 
ourselves? 

Such a definition of our fundamental policy is 
peculiarly important because there exists among 
many Americans a vague, half-formed distrust of 
the formulae "to make the world safe for democ- 
racy" and "to destroy Prussian militarism. " 
Many ask themselves, "What is German militarism 
to us? Is there such an institution except as a part 
of a general European militarism? " Others believe 
that it is necessary to Germany. In any case are 
we, with our leaking democracy, fit champions of 
democracy? They even predict that, in seeking to 
free our foe, we shall fasten militarism upon our- 
selves. These doubts are dangerous. They impel 
us to accept an unripe peace in order to escape from 
an impossible war. Moreover, similar doubts are 



THE WAR AGAINST MILITARISM 75 

expressed by men of totally different temperament, 
who wish to continue the war, not for rainbows and 
iridescent bubbles but in pursuit of concrete, valu- 
able American interests. 1 They are willing to fight 
for territory, trade, power and the prestige which 
leads to power, but not for democracy, of which in 
their opinion we already have too much. 

To meet all this criticism, much of it unexpressed, 
is difficult and tedious, yet it is essential if we are 
to maintain our war solidarity. We must not only 
explain, but vivify and dramatize our real conflict 
with German militarism. Only so can we create a 
conviction that America has a substantial and per- 
manent interest in overcoming this institution, that 
it is an interest worth fighting for and not to be 
attained without fighting; that we are waging war 
for this purpose and no other, and that we do not 
intend that the war shall be diverted to any other 
end. 

Our vagueness of attack upon the German sys- 
tem is met by an equal vagueness in the defence. 
In perfect honesty, though with a misapprehension 
of the true issue, apologists for Germany insist that 

i "Without taking too seriously the fascinating program 'of mak- 
ing the world safe for democracy," " writes Dr. H. H. Powers in an 
illuminating and candid book, "it is well to remember that the war 
is to be fought on European soil and in conjunction with nations 
having possessions in every part of the world. When the peace con- 
ference meets we shall hear very little of the sonorous slogans which 
heralded the war's beginning and much of the concrete problems for 
which these phrases suggest no very tangible solution." "America 
Among the Nations," by H. H. Powers, New York, 1917, p. 160. 



76 THE END OF THE WAR 

there is no Prussian militarism, except as there is 
also a French, Italian and Russian militarism. 
They prove that in 1913 Germany had fewer sol- 
diers than certain of her opponents, both absolutely 
and in proportion to population, and that her per 
capita military and naval expenditures were con- 
siderably smaller than those of France or Great 
Britain. But all this is beyond the point, for mili- 
tarism does not depend exclusively upon the size, 
cost, efficiency or readiness of armies. It is a social, 
not merely a military, phenomenon, a form of social 
organization and a state of mind. 

That Russia in 1914 was more autocratic than 
Germany and in some respects as militaristic was a 
telling argument disquieting to liberals in England, 
France and America. That Japan was militaristic 
and autocratic was equally evident. If the Allies, 
therefore, had designed immediately to destroy all 
militarism they should logically have refused the 
assistance of Russia and Japan and thus added 
them to their enemies. Naturally no such suicidal 
policy was considered. To England and France 
autocracy and militarism presented themselves not 
as abstract principles, but as part of a vast com- 
plex and menacing system, and the war appeared 
to them a war of defence. They fought German 
militarism, not because opposed to its principle but 
because endangered by its power, just as they would 
have fought a menacing imperialistic German de- 



THE WAR AGAINST MILITARISM 77 

mocracy. The militaristic nations, Russia and Ger- 
many, being mutually antagonistic, the western Al- 
lies enlisted the former against the latter. They em- 
ployed a future against a present foe, following not 
counsels of perfection but a law of necessity. 

In a real sense, however, Germany was a more 
avowed and logical representative and champion 
of militarism than was autocratic Russia. Su- 
premely capable she had wedded her efficiency to the 
militaristic principle. She had harnessed her in- 
dustry, commerce and educational system to a 
policy hostile to the democracy of the Western 
World. With a philosophy justifying warfare and 
aggression she had indoctrinated her millions. In- 
tellectually and physically she was a gigantic pro- 
tagonist. On the other hand, Russian militarism 
was uninspired, inefficient and unoriginal; the sort 
of thing which had once been and now no longer was 
in Western Europe. German militarism was based 
materially on a rapidly growing wealth and intellec- 
tually on a neo-Darwinism, which envisaged all his- 
tory as a biologic struggle between growing and de- 
caying nations, in which the strong destroyed and 
devoured the weak. It was a very old, very new sys- 
tem, which threatened to subvert Europe. 

The German apologists, even when they admit the 
existence of this system, deny that it was a menace. 
It was, they claim, a sort of Cinderella militarism, 
modest, stay-at-home, pacific. "German militar- 



78 THE END OF THE WAR 

ism," says Dr. Bernard Dernburg, "has kept the 
peace for forty-four years. While Russia went to 
war with Turkey and China and, after having pro- 
moted The Hague Conference, battled with Japan 
and 'protected' Persia, conquering territory double 
the size of the United States on the might-is-right 
principle ; while England, the defender of the rights 
of the small states, smashed the Boer republics, took 
Egypt, Cyprus and South Persia; while the French 
Republic conquered the Sudan, Tunis, Madagascar, 
Indo-China and Morocco; while Italy possessed itself 
of Tripoli and the islands in the iEgean Sea ; while 
Japan fought China, took Formosa, Korea and 
Southern Manchuria and has now, with the aid of 
her allies, invaded China, a neutral country; there 
is not one annexation or increase of territory to the 
charge of Germany. She has waged no war of any 
kind and has never acquired a territory in all her 
existence except by treaty and with the consent of the 
rest of the world." x 

Disregarding the exaggeration and disingenuous- 
ness of this statement, which gives a totally false 
impression of recent German foreign policy, we 
might accept it as literally true and still find in 
German militarism a menace more ominous than the 
land-greed of Great Britain, France, Italy and Rus- 
sia. Not for a moment may we compare the grav- 

i "Germany and England. The Real Issue," by Dr. Bernard Dern- 
burg. Chicago, 1914, page 6. 



THE WAR AGAINST MILITARISM 79 

ity of invoking the present European conflict with 
that of the conquest of Morocco, the "strangling" of 
Persia or the assault on the Boer republics. War 
against semi-civilized, half-organized collections of 
tribes, or even against the Boers, whether justifiable 
or not, is on a different plane from an attempt to 
overturn and subdue long-established, highly organ- 
ized national states like France and Belgium. And 
this many Germans believed to be necessary. It had 
long been an axiom of German policy that colonial 
possessions could be secured only by direct pressure 
upon European neighbours. African colonies must 
be won by invading Belgium and Russia, by bleed- 
ing France white, by destroying British sea-power. 
To secure what she wanted and believed she had a 
right to possess, Germany conceived that she was 
forced to strike at the heart of enemies who blocked 
her colonial development. Her militarism, there- 
fore, presented itself to such enemies as a mortal 
peril. 

It is not a question of morals that is involved but 
of necessity. Germany insists that even if she began 
the war (which she denies) she was justified by the 
selfish policy of enemies seeking to thwart and 
strangle her. Were this true, however, the mere 
fact that she could gain what she wanted only by 
overcoming those established nations would alone 
render her a menace to the world. But it does not 
appear that Germany used conciliatory methods to 



80 THE END OF THE WAR 

gain her place in the sun. 1 That she was constricted 
in her colonial expansion is true, for the Allies were 
neither generous nor far-seeing. But such halting 
advances as were made struck against an arrogant 
and irreconcilable spirit in Germany. Her rulers 
were victims of their own philosophy, believing in 
their military invincibility and in the doctrine that 
only by threats could concessions be enforced. 
They interpreted peace offers therefore as weak- 
ness, and entered so uncomprehendingly into nego- 
tiations as to make favourable results impossible. 
Their manners were, if anything, worse than their 
morals. They began negotiations by pounding the 
table, by an imperial visit to Tangier, or a sudden 
spring of the Panther at Agadir. They talked 
loud, rattled the sabre, appeared in the council cham- 
ber "in shining armour." And back of the equivo- 
cating diplomats stood the mob of clumsy pan-Ger- 
mans, shrieking insults at France and England, 
proposing gross plans of conquest to Germany's 
rulers, thus reminding the world that whatever was 
given would be merely an occasion for new de- 
mands. The result was a diplomatic failure. If 
concession was to be interpreted as weakness, the 
neighbours of Germany would concede nothing. In 

i On the other hand it must be admitted that in the negotiations 
leading up to the attempted settlement of the Bagdad Railway ques- 
tion (1914) Germany showed a willingness to meet England half- 
way. Nor were England, France and Russia always conciliatory. 



THE WAR AGAINST MILITARISM 81 

the years during which France deftly secured large 
additions to her colonial empire, Germany's blus- 
tering gained nothing but disappointments and ill- 
will. 

At bottom, of course, the question whether the 
one group or the other or both were at fault is quite 
irrelevant. What was revealed by the impotent 
deliberations between Germany and her present 
enemies was the fact that two opposing policies 
were in conflict and that these policies gained ad- 
herents because they represented the antagonistic 
interests of two groups of nations. Each group 
believed that to accept its opponent's principle would 
be fatal. England's international theory was pre- 
dicated on the assumption that the British Empire 
must increase or at least maintain itself, while the 
theory of Germany assumed that the Fatherland 
must grow. The new German Empire (so, at least, 
it appeared to Englishmen) must be founded upon 
the ruins of the British Empire, must live off the 
lands upon which Britain had lived, must break Eng- 
land's resistance and if necessary destroy England's 
independence. The two principles had impinged be- 
cause the two nations had impinged. The menace of 
militarism became for Great Britain the menace of 
an expanding Germany. 

To understand what this peril really meant to 
Western Europe we must consider what might have 



82 THE END OF THE WAR 

occurred had Germany succeeded in her first West- 
ern drive. Belgium would have gone down and 
France been crushed. A secure Germany army, 
occupying Paris, Calais, Havre, Verdun could have 
kept the dispirited French troops beyond the Loire 
and intercepted any effective aid from England. A 
treaty with France might have given Germany large 
tracts of land, immense mineral resources, a firm 
footing on the English Channel and a stupendous in- 
demnity, together with the French colonies and per- 
haps the French navy. It would have been an im- 
mense booty. Belgian independence gone, Holland, 
Denmark and Switzerland would have become vassal 
states. In the Balkans, on the road to Constanti- 
nople and Bagdad, no power could have resisted a 
future German advance, since Russia, without 
France's support, would have been impotent. Even 
Great Britain could have done nothing. "When the 
mighty German Empire," wrote Mr. Frederic Har- 
rison, "soon to be increased to a population double 
our own, is master of the whole seaboard of North 
Europe from Havre to Hamburg — a coast more 
fitted for navies than is our own coast between Dover 
and Aberdeen, when their aeroplane and Zeppelin 
stations look across the Channel from a dozen head- 
lands, and the mouths of great tidal rivers gape 
upon our shores, and behind these fortresses and 
docks there lies in wait a mighty nation having a 
fleet then larger than ours, and armies of three or 



THE WAR AGAINST MILITARISM 83 

four millions of men — would the flag of Britain float 
quietly at ease? " x 

Such was the menace of German militarism as 
viewed by British statesmen in August, 1914. Eng- 
land's participation was not decided by the Belgian 
invasion nor by the Belgian atrocities. These were 
mere incidents. Had Germany observed all the 
rules of war, killed with punctilio, conferred warm 
soup and iron crosses on enemy non-combatants 
and generally behaved like a twentieth-century Ro- 
land, had she invaded France at Verdun and not at 
Namur, the result of her victory would have meant 
an equal disaster to England. A crushing of France 
meant an ultimate crushing of Great Britain. 2 

While a complete German victory would have de- 
stroyed England, even the danger of such a victory 
would have blasted the hope of a British democracy. 
Democracy is a luxury. It can be developed and 
maintained only in a moderately secure and pacific 
world. This is due to the superior fighting efficiency 
of militaristic states. In a war between nations of 
equal resources, population and intelligence, one of 
which is devoting its energies and thought to social 
reconstruction and the other primarily interested in 

i "The Meaning of the War," by Frederic Harrison, London, 1915, 
p. 2. 

2 To destroy Britain large armies would not have been necessary; 
she could have been starved financially and economically by depriv- 
ing her of markets, raw materials and food. Without a German sol- 
dier on British soil, England could have been forced to surrender. 



84 THE END OF THE WAR 

preparing for war, the advantage lies enormously 
with the latter. The great military superiority of 
Germany over other nations, the unlimited devotion 
of her people and the skill and foresight with which 
her martial operations are conceived and carried out, 
reveal an alarming military advantage of the auto- 
cratic state over the democratic nation. The dan- 
ger cast its shadow far during the ten years pre- 
ceding the conflict. The fear of Germany in both 
England and France was one of the greatest ob- 
stacles to democracy and social reform. In England 
Lord Roberts urged conscription and was opposed 
by the great masses of the wage-earners. In France 
the Socialists vigorously combated the reintroduc- 
tion of the three years' military service. So long as 
one nation remained supremely efficient in its mili- 
tarism and ready to attack at any moment, the other 
nations were hampered in their efforts to achieve 
progress toward political, industrial or social de- 
mocracy. 

We in America are forced to view the menace 
of German militarism in the same light as do the 
democrats of England and France. If we are to 
achieve democracy, or even to maintain such democ- 
racy as we now have, conditions must be established 
in the rest of the world which will render us safe. 

In the past we have tacitly assumed that our 
safety would be permanent. We were so far re- 
moved from Europe that we believed that no great 



THE WAR AGAINST MILITARISM 85 

power could attack us. Isolation, however, is meas- 
ured not in miles of distance but in the difficulty and 
delay of transporting troops, and in this respect the 
technical progress of the last thirty years has vastly 
diminished our immunity. Our enemy will no 
longer transport his troops with slow-sailing vessels 
of small burden as during our wars with England, 
but will use gigantic and rapid steamships. Our 
first line of defence is almost gone. 

Our second protection from the superior strength 
of Europe lay in her balance of power. No nation 
wished to embroil herself with America so long as 
she feared enemies nearer home. A hostile coalition 
of states, as was threatened during our war with 
Spain, would have found us defenceless. But if 
Germany were to succeed in crushing France and in 
destroying England, the balance of power would 
come to an end, and ultimately the victor could com- 
bine against us a large proportion of the superior 
military and economic resources of Europe. In such 
a case it would have been difficult to defend the in- 
tegrity of our territory or to find leisure to develop 
our democracy. We should have had other preoccu- 
pations. 

This brings us to the point where the questions 
with which this chapter opened can be answered. 
We combat German autocracy because it is a princi- 
ple adverse to the democracy for which we strive. 
We combat German militarism because it, also, rep- 



86 THE END OF THE WAR 

resents an antagonistic principle. But against 
neither of these should we have gone to war but for 
the fact that these principles so present themselves 
as to menace our democracy and our safety. We are 
opposed to German autocracy because it aids German 
militarism ; to German militarism because it leads to 
German aggression ; to German aggression because, 
owing to Germany's strategic position and her im- 
mense strength, owing to conditions which in large 
measure are not Germany's fault, her aggression 
may overturn the balance of power in Europe, de- 
stroy our security, and render it difficult for us to 
develop a democracy at home, or even to maintain 
our independence. We are therefore compelled at 
the worst to fight for a return to the Balance of 
Power, although theoretically we are opposed to this 
system, or at the best for an internationalism, in 
which all peril will disappear. The one thing, how- 
ever, which we cannot view with equanimity is the 
marshalling of Europe's strength under the leader- 
ship of a single mighty state, autocratic, militaris- 
tic and aggressive. We are therefore fighting both 
a principle and a power; we are opposed to Ger- 
many, not only because of the quality but also be- 
cause of the magnitude of her menace. 

For us as for Britain the Marne was a sav- 
ing victory, at least temporarily. It is true that 
the danger to us from a defeat at the Marne would 
have been delayed, for between us and Germany lay 



THE WAR AGAINST MILITARISM 87 

Great Britain, as between her and Germany lay 
France and Belgium. When we contemplate, how- 
ever, the ravages of German submarines operating 
under grave difficulties we gain some conception of 
what a Germany, possessed of the French fleet and 
a part of the French coast, could eventually have 
achieved against the commerce of the British Isles. 
At best Great Britain could only have maintained 
her existence; at worst she might have been con- 
quered and her navy and a part of her industrial 
power annexed. Against such a combination of 
navies and resources, against even a Franco-Ger- 
man navy (Great Britain remaining neutral) the 
United States could accomplish little. We should 
face a hostile combination of the immensely more 
powerful and better organized resources of Western 
Europe. By what means could we uphold the Mon- 
roe Doctrine or maintain our commerce? Could we 
even be sure of defending our own soil? 

Had Germany won that battle, we should instantly 
have recognized the sinister menace of her militar- 
ism. With her defeat, however, we again breathed 
lightly, for in due course Britain, France and Russia 
would break down the Central Empires. We there- 
fore composedly returned to our discussions con- 
cerning White Papers, provocations, counter-provo- 
cations, the rights of neutrals, the wrongs of com- 
batants. Yet though the danger of a victory for 
German militarism seemed to have passed, we were 



88 THE END OF THE WAR 

gradually familiarizing ourselves with the quality of 
that institution. 

It was its formidableness that most astounded us. 
We were outraged by Louvain, Rheims, the Zeppe- 
lin raids, the submarine atrocities, the execution of 
Edith Cavell, the murder of Captain Fryatt, but 
what brought us definitely into opposition was the 
sheer power and viability of a principle which we 
had believed to be half-dead. Militarism had al- 
ways been associated in our minds with autocracy, 
and that we had conceived as a weak-minded and 
hoary immigrant from an outlived age, a sort of 
political Fafner, surviving through mere inertia. 
It was preindustrial, which is our modern and secu- 
lar synonym for pre-Adamitic. It had no more 
raison d'etre than the fact that it was still half- 
alive and not worth killing. We no longer had any 
quarrel with kings and emperors, who had had their 
claws cut and had become gracious layers of corner- 
stones and innocent symbols of democratic power. 
Autocracy, we believed, would disappear gradually 
and in fractions, tail, body and head, like the Chesh- 
ire cat, until, as with British royalty, nothing re- 
mained but the smile. 

The war taught us that autocracy was not a thing 
of kings and crown-princes, but a living principle, 
an efficient form of social organization. Instead of 
dying decently at the first whiff of factory smoke, 
instead of being run over by the new railroads or 



THE WAR AGAINST MILITARISM 89 

crowded to death in our modern cities, it con- 
verted industrialism to its own uses and seated it- 
self in the centre of the economic system. It did not 
die of education, but made of the school-teacher one 
of its main supports. The university and the news- 
paper became, not its executioners, but its servile 
handmaidens. Autocracy was efficient. It per- 
sisted in living. It persisted in growing. 

Therein lay its menace. It was expansive, nec- 
essarily expansive. 

It was expansive because of its origin and the law 
of its being. The autocratic principle persisted in 
modern intelligent Germany because it grew out of 
foreign relations, was born of danger and lived on 
danger. It was her external menace that fastened 
autocracy and militarism on Germany. During two 
long centuries her invaders (Swedes, French, Croats 
and others), by keeping the nation divided, had cre- 
ated German autocracy and militarism by giving the 
people so ardent a desire for security that they wel- 
comed any social organization by which it could be 
attained. To this day the German lives under the 
shadow of the Thirty Years' War and remembers 
Tilly, Wallenstein and Gustavus Adolphus, as he 
remembers Louis XIV and Napoleon. Even the 
liberal German tends to regard an autocratic mili- 
tarism as an insurance premium. He feels toward 
it as we toward our police; we may not love the 
policeman but prefer him to the thief. 



90 THE END OF THE WAR 

The power to defend, however, means the power 
as well as the temptation to attack, and Germany like 
other nations is not beyond such temptation. All 
the European peoples were menaced. We have read 
recent history wrongly if we conceive of it in terms 
of an aggressive Germany constantly planning to 
attack nations wholly devoted to peace. Both 
groups of allies meditated both aggression and de- 
fence. Justified or not, Serbian ambitions in Aus- 
tria and Russian ambitions in the Balkans were 
aggressive, as were also Austria's designs on Ser- 
bia. Because Germany needed defence, because she 
wanted to aggress, because she believed that only 
by military effort could she achieve her ends, and 
finally because she was in a geographical situation 
in which a successful war could destroy the security 
of other great nations, German imperialism became 
a deadly menace. 

Thus the Western World, including America, 
comes into conflict with a nation, representing power, 
aggression, and an alien philosophy. Of these 
opposed philosophies one is based on an autocratic, 
militaristic foundation, emphasizing the virtues 
of order, discipline, endurance, subordination, pro- 
lificity, stoicism, and laying stress on loyalty 
and a traditional personal honour. It believes in 
compulsion, the omnipotence of the state, the empti- 
ness and worthlessness of plans to avert warfare. 
The other philosophy is more democratic and pacifis- 



THE WAE AGAINST MILITARISM 91 

tic, emphasizing individual freedom, the quest of 
pleasure, the virtues of prosperity. It is melioristic 
and legalistic, stressing rights and privileges and 
underemphasizing duties. It is progressive and con- 
fident. It believes in a low birth rate, in ease and 
protection from danger. It is optimistic and 
money-making. 

Of course not all Germans uphold one philosophy 
nor all British, French and Americans the other; 
there are millions of exceptions on both sides. 
Bernhardi himself is our witness to the demoraliz- 
ing, by which he means demilitarizing, influence upon 
Germany of recent wealth. On the other hand, there 
are always a few American, French and British fire- 
breathers, with little to learn from their more nu- 
merous and loquacious German compeers. Not the 
exception, however, but the rule determines. For 
reasons, partly beyond its own control, Germany be- 
came the exponent and protagonist of the militarist 
philosophy, and sought to live up to its doctrines in 
a war, which had she been victorious would for a 
time have subverted the democratic civilization of 
the West. 

It is of course not to be assumed that of these 
opposed philosophies autocracy was aggressive 
and democracy not; both principles were, and are, 
aggressive and intensely missionary. The very 
phrase ''Making the world safe for democracy" 
suggests how encroaching was our own principle. 



92 THE END OF THE WAR 

England, France and the United States had hitherto 
prospered because of historical and geographical 
reasons, and had sanctified their gains by a glori- 
fying possession. The course of historic evolution 
in its larger bearings had worked for them, and they, 
its beneficiaries and disciples, saw everything that 
it had made; "and behold, it was very good." On 
the other hand the German principle was disturb- 
ing and revolutionary because Germany had every- 
thing to gain from a change. 

The indefatigable traveller from Mars, arriving 
at this green earth in the spring of 1914, might have 
come to the typically Martian conclusion that the 
Earth was most unfortunately divided, that an in- 
efficient and garrulous democratic spirit had con- 
quered the greater area while the unique and saving 
principle, an efficient, industrialized, moral autoc- 
racy was dying of inanition within narrow confines. 
With all of which many Germans would agree. 
They would proudly admit that militarism is pecul- 
iar to Germany, but in the same breath they would 
insist that it is excellent, the last word in our mod- 
ern development towards equality, democracy and 
subordination. 

When a new recruit enters the army, says N. Gold- 
mann, a young defender of the principle of militar- 
ism, 1 two things occur: he is given a uniform and 

i Goldmann (N.) "Der Geist des Militarismus." ("Der Deutsche 
Krieg.") Berlin and Stuttgart, 1015. 



THE WAR AGAINST MILITARISM 93 

is told to do whatever his superiors command. 
These two acts typify our modern civilization. The 
uniform is the expression of the democratic idea, the 
suppression for the time being of all differences 
among men; "in uniform no one is noble or com- 
moner, millionaire or beggar, artist or philistine, 
orthodox or atheist," but all are members of the 
army. By the distinction between those who com- 
mand and those who obey, on the other hand, the 
"aristocratic idea" is maintained. Democracy and 
subordination — the union of these two creates mili- 
tarism — and civilization. 

Therefore, writes Goldmann, "the battle cry of 
the opponents of Germany is justified. The Ger- 
man spirit may be called the militaristic spirit." 
But far from being alien to modern development or 
opposed to West European civilization, militarism 
is their distinguishing characteristic. The great 
city, the factory and our whole industrial system 
are based on its principles of uniformity and 
subordination, in other words, on regimentation. 
Therefore we speak of the "barracks" of the work- 
ing-men and of the industrial ' ' reserve army. ' ' The 
individual workman, technician, engineer, director 
counts for little ; the enterprise is all-important. So 
in our intellectual life militarism is supreme and 
"the German spirit rules the world." The opposi- 
tion to militarism comes not from Western civiliza- 
tion but from the "atomism" of English life, from 



94 THE END OF THE WAR 

the English incapacity to generalize, to sacrifice for 
the common good, even to recognize the existence of 
a common good. 1 

Germany has become great, continues Goldmann, 
through her militarism, just as Great Britain became 
great through "her anti-militaristic, individualistic 
spirit. ' ' In the world struggle between the two prin- 
ciples militarism must be victorious. "Germany 
will conquer and the world will be ruled by the mili- 
taristic spirit." Only such a victory will permit 
the present age to solve its problems. 

Despite Mr. Goldmann 's prediction, the world, in 
the event of an Allied victory, will seek to solve our 
modern problems without the assistance either of 
autocracy or of militarism. It will see what it can 
do with democracy. 

But the democracy which can be utilized in such 
a vast reorganization will of necessity be something 
different from the lax, inefficient and brutal plutoc- 
racies which we find in several of the nations 
opposed to Germany. It must be a socialized de- 

i Militarism is not identical with the maintenance of an army, as 
the Swiss experience proves. In a recent booklet the German Social- 
ist, Karl Kautsky, clearly makes this distinction. "We (the Ger- 
man Socialists) have fought against the military system not to make 
the land defenceless, but in order to introduce another system in its 
place, which will give us the necessary guarantees that the army will 
always be the tool of the civil authorities and never their master. 
When the latter is the case we call such a condition 'militarism,' and 
it is against that alone that we fight." "Die Internationalitaet und 
der Krieg," Berlin, 1915, p. 26, quoted by Thomas F. A. Smith, 
"What Germany Thinks," New York, 1915, p. 112. 



THE WAR AGAINST MILITARISM 95 

mocracy, not a mere popular government based on 
money and on the exploitation of the poor. 

It is sometimes alleged that, because we in Amer- 
ica have not attained to such a socialized democracy, 
we are not fit to become the champions of the demo- 
cratic principle. Critics point to our lynchings, our 
political corruption and ineptitudes and our gross 
economic inequalities. They point out that it is our 
own Prussian-blue reactionaries, grown fat and no- 
torious in their warfare against a true American 
freedom, who are loudest in their defence of our 
democracy. But what else could be expected? 
No war was ever won by the virtuous alone, and it 
is inevitable that tax-dodgers, union-smashers, 
monopolists, cadets, ward-politicians, sweat-shop 
proprietors and desultory burners of Negroes, to 
say nothing of criminals, lunatics and aging keepers 
of houses of prostitution should be enlisted side by 
side with other elements in the population. We 
are a full democracy not in being but in process. 
It is a war for the bases of democracy, for the safety 
of a capitalistic society developing rapidly towards 
democracy. Like several of our Allies, we are fight- 
ing not only for freedom from alarms over our in- 
dependence but also for a chance to try out the 
Great Experiment, to struggle forward towards the 
ultimate attainment of a great ideal. And in this 
struggle we can count upon the willing assistance of 



96 THE END OF THE WAR 

men who do not grasp the implications of their 
adhesion. 

America therefore is at war because her growing 
democracy is in conflict with the militaristic insti- 
tutions and philosophy of Germany, and because her 
democracy and her entire national development 
would be endangered by the German victory, which 
would have been probable had we not entered. We 
thus have both a general and a specific interest; a 
desire to promote a better system in Europe and 
a wish to maintain our own democracy intact. In 
a sense we are fighting a preventive war, seeking to 
destroy the menace of German militarism before it 
can attack us in our own home. Just as we sink 
submarines at sight, rather than by "armed neu- 
trality" limiting ourselves- to defence, so we assail 
Germany in concert with her present enemies rather 
than attend her possible attack after her victory in 
Europe. 

How much further should we go? Have we an 
interest, and has the world, in proceeding beyond 
the destruction of German militarism to the perma- 
nent building up of a British, French, Italian, Rus- 
sian or American militarism? 

The danger is not fictitious. Germany developed 
her militarism out of a sense of external peril, and 
if the war goes against her, and the old European 
system remains, she will still be menaced and at 
least potentially militaristic. Furthermore if we en- 



THE WAR AGAINST MILITARISM 97 

courage Serbia and Italy, Greece and France, Brit- 
ain, Japan and Russia to develop new antagonisms, 
we shall be planting the seeds of militarism through- 
out the world. Germany will have been defeated, 
but German militarism will have triumphed. 



CHAPTER V 

SPOILING THE ENEMY 

Since the imperialism of the Allies in the present 
war is less sweeping and drastic than that of Ger- 
many, we are sometimes urged to close an eye or turn 
our back. When we are trying to capture an armed 
burglar we do not inquire too curiously into the ques- 
tion whether a few of the posse comitatus are modest 
confidence men. There is a sense of proportion in 
these things, and there are diplomatic convenances. 

Even were our co-belligerents twice as imperial- 
istic as they are, we should still be compelled to make 
common cause with them against the still more men- 
acing German aggression. Our secure loyalty to 
our Allies is not in question. But to make common 
cause, to maintain a real concert of action, requires 
harmony in ideals and unity of aims. It is for 
this reason that we are forced to review the instincts, 
motives and demands that lie behind the armies of 
our Allies. When we are united we shall have a 
chance to win the war. Until then we shall drag 
along, working at cross-purposes. 

The truth must be faced. The efforts of the Allies 
to gain a victory for democracy and internationalism 
have everywhere been impeded by their own na- 

98 



SPOILING THE ENEMY 99 

tionalistic ambitions. It is trebly unfortunate that 
this has been the case. Not only have these ambi- 
tions vitiated their good faith in their war against 
German autocracy, not only have they made the 
eventual victory far less valuable, but they have 
delayed and jeopardized that victory. Because of 
their clashing territorial ambitions our co-belliger- 
ents find it difficult even today to achieve unity of 
purpose or action, and as their plans of aggrandize- 
ment become known in Germany and Austria, and 
are there exaggerated, they tend to unify the entire 
population of the Central Powers, reactionaries and 
democrats, conservatives and liberals, Germans, 
Austrians, Hungarians, and even the exploited races 
of the Dual Monarchy. The secret treaties into 
which the Allies entered make the whole war for 
democracy appear to our enemies as a sham and as 
an excuse for their own imperialism. 

To many it will seem mal-a-propos and perhaps 
even unpatriotic to state these facts. Why should 
we injure our own side even by telling the truth? 
Will not a revelation of these covert ambitions of 
our Allies have the effect of demoralizing the En- 
tente Powers and of destroying their solidarity? 
When our sons and brothers are risking their lives 
on the battle front is it time for academic discussions 
of past events, discussions which cannot but give aid 
and comfort to the enemy? 

But what if the enemy already knows 1 The news- 



100 THE END OF THE WAR 

papers in the hostile countries have printed long ac- 
counts, true and false, of the designs of each of the 
Allied nations. By suppressing such facts we do 
not prevent Germany's knowing them. Today we 
of the Allied countries by reason of a supposedly 
patriotic silence are fighting in the dark and risking 
lives that might be saved. We are standing in the 
way of our own solidarity, and are making our task 
harder and more dangerous than it need be. Be- 
cause we do not properly consider and duly assess 
facts which are important elements in our war prob- 
lem, we weaken our morale and strengthen that of 
the Imperial German Government. If we face the 
truth and intelligently guide our action by the con- 
clusions we reach, our enemy will be welcome to any 
comfort he may derive from the result. 

There is an even more important reason for dis- 
cussing this question. When we entered the war we 
already had an inkling of the imperialistic aims of 
several of our Allies. If, notwithstanding this 
knowledge, we took sides with them, we did so be- 
cause we vaguely felt that this imperialism was not a 
necessary and inevitable part of the allied program, 
that by our concert with these nations we might aid 
in the democratization of their peace terms, that we 
might raise a standard about which the more demo- 
cratic of our Allies and the more democratic classes 
within these Allied nations could rally. Unless we 
can do this we can gain no moral victory. And we 



SPOILING THE ENEMY 101 

can make no progress in this direction so long as we 
seek to remain silent on this delicate question. 

It is not necessary in discussing the territorial am- 
bitions of our Allies to pass a moral judgment or to 
assume an ethical superiority on our own part. No 
demand by any of our Allies has been more flagrant a 
breach of international morality than were the claims 
which led to our war with Mexico. It is superla j 
tively easy to indict nations for concealing selfish am- 
bitions under protestations of international recti- 
tude. But such an indictment does not help us, for 
our problem is not to distribute praise or blame but 
to seek a true basis for an international civilization 
and thus secure a real victory. It is far more impor- 
tant to understand these nationalistic ambitions, to 
recognize how deeply they are rooted in the whole 
history of modern Europe and to acknowledge their 
inevitableness in the circumstances than to appraise 
and judge. 

What was the diplomatic state of Europe out of 
which grew these demands of our Allies? What 
chance was there for any nation following the even 
path of rectitude and abnegation? 

In his defence of Sir Edward Grey's foreign pol- 
icy, Sir Gilbert Murray deplores the fact that the 
diplomacy of the nations has been frankly egoistic, 
cruel and dishonest. " There is," he says, about the 
ordinary processes of Foreign Policy, "a constant 
suspicion of intrigue, a constant assertion of 'inter- 



102 THE END OF THE WAR 

ests, ' a dangerous familiarity with thoughts of force 
or fraud, and a habit of using silken phrases as a 
cover for very brutal facts. . . . Foreign Politics are 
the relations between so many bands of outlaws. ' ' * 
As a consequence even the nations with high ideals 
must go into international conferences with a big 
knife, ready to carve out a slice of territory or carve 
up the plausive foe. 

In 1914 therefore the enemies of Germany, though 
fighting a war for their very existence, were nei- 
ther more nor less scrupulous than they had been 
in former years. These Western and Eastern Allies, 
defending themselves against Germany, conceived 
the problem of the division of the world somewhat 
as did Germany, simply because it was the only con- 
ception then admitted in diplomatic Europe. Ac- 
cording to this conception each nation was bound to 
grow, expand, get what it could, make the best bar- 
gain with enemy and ally. To take, was not only 
directly advantageous but also had the merit of pre- 
venting the enemy from taking. 

Of all the original allies in the struggle against 
German aggression, Imperial Russia was probably 
the most avid of territory and the least concerned 
with the ideals that inspired many Englishmen, 
Frenchmen and Belgians. From the Czar's point 
of view the war was not a struggle of democracy 

i "The Foreign Policy of Sir Edward Grey," by Sir Gilbert Mur- 
ray, Oxford, 1915, p. 41. 



SPOILING THE ENEMY 103 

against militarism but a contest for supremacy in 
the Balkans and for domination of the Straits. The 
Imperial Russian Government wanted no barren vic- 
tory but a visible expansion. To meet these large 
demands France and Great Britain presented 
counter-demands, and from that moment the war 
became a feverish scramble for spoils. Arising thus 
out of national struggles for territory and military 
prestige, the contest was carried on by the enticement 
of new Allies through promises of material reward. 
It was fought not only for democracy but for lands, 
indemnities and trade privileges. With many peo- 
ple in the Allied nations the purpose of the war was 
to discredit "the aggressive objects and the unscru- 
pulous methods of the Central Powers"; with others 
the purpose was to secure definite material national- 
istic aims. 

These aims were not new ; they have always existed 
and are indeed inseparable from the long struggle 
for power in Europe and for dominion beyond Eu- 
rope. No one can study the devious course of in- 
ternational politics since the Congress of Berlin 
(and before) without recognizing that European na- 
tions have long carried on a ruthless, aggressive 
policy both within Europe and in Asia and Africa. 
To take a single example; there was little concern 
for internationalism in the attitude of any of the 
European Powers towards Turkey, the Balkan 
States, Persia, Morocco or China. "The history of 



104 THE END OF THE WAR 

international diplomacy in the Islamic world," 
writes Professor Gibbons, 1 "is an unbroken record 
of bullying and blundering on the part of all the 
Powers. In governmental policies one searches in 
vain for more than an occasional ray of chivalry, 
uprightness, altruism, for a consistent line of ac- 
tion in attempting to solve the problems that were 
leading Europe from one war to another, for con- 
structive statesmanship." "The indictment of Eu- 
ropean diplomacy in the Near East is terrible." 2 

It would be profitless to cite further instances of 
the callousness and blindness of the past foreign 
policies of all the great European nations. Though 
in Great Britain, France and several other coun- 
tries, many high-minded men strove for interna- 
tional concord and not for nationalistic gain, foreign 
policy was determined not by the ideals of these lib- 
erals and democrats, but by necessities imposed by 
a dangerous and thoroughly anarchic condition of 
the world. Europe was a trembling balance of hos- 
tile powers, and each state stood by its allies, right 
or wrong, in order that they, in turn, might come 

i "The Reconstruction of Poland and the Near East," by Herbert 
Adams Gibbons, New York, 1917, pp. 115, 116, 117. 

2 "The evolution of Serbia, of Roumania, of Bulgaria, of Greece, 
of Crete; the sufferings of Armenia and Syria; the anarchy of 
Arabia; the vacillating policy in Egypt and Northern Africa; the 
intrigues at Constantinople; the handling of Persia and Afghanistan, 
give us the formula of European diplomacy. It is this: selfish 
national interest endeavouring to thwart other selfish national in- 
interests" Gibbons op tit, pp. 118, 119. (My italics.) 



SPOILING THE ENEMY 105 

to its aid in time of trial. From 1870 to 1905 Ger- 
many, by means of her alliances, maintained a cer- 
tain supremacy on the Continent, while Great Britain 
held first place in colonial development. From 1905 
to 1914, however, there was waged an embittered, 
secret and desperate contest between Germany, seek- 
ing to dominate, and France, Kussia and Britain de- 
termined to break her hegemony. The struggle for 
control in Europe merged with a conflict of rival 
imperialisms in which there was little pretence of 
disinterestedness. Among all these nations there 
was not much to choose in the matter of comparative 
international morality. Germany's Chinese policy 
was brutal and hypocritical, but no worse than the 
corrupt and ruthless policy of Russia. As for the 
long struggle between Austria and Russia for dom- 
ination of the Balkans, neither nation was squeam- 
ishly virtuous. 1 Had the Allies in this war abjured 
all hopes of aggrandizement and limited themselves 
to an idealistic sacrifice for small nationalities, the 
step would have marked a complete moral revolution, 
a religious conversion hitherto unknown in European 
diplomacy. 

They had not abjured such hopes. It is true that 
progress has been made towards a liberalization of 
allied war-aims, partly as a result of Russian and 

i For a partisan history of this conflict, from the Austrian point 
of view, see "Der Gegensatz zwischen Oesterreich-Ungarn und Russ- 
land," by Dr. Alexander Redlich, Stuttgart and Berlin ("Deutsche 
Verlags-Anstalt") 1915. 



106 THE END OF THE WAR 

American influence and partly because of untoward 
events upon the battle-field. The January (1918) 
speech of Lloyd George marks a recession from 
a former imperialistic position, and a similar at- 
titude is being crystallized all over Europe. Even 
today, however, the Allies are inspired by motives 
of national gain as well as by a sincere reprobation 
of Germany's crimes; the idealistic motive is still 
weighed to earth by a thousand gross desires and 
an inveterate predatory habit. A new and better 
spirit, though seeking expression, fails completely 
to inspire the vigorous, short-sighted men who con- 
duct national policy. These diplomats of the old 
school want from this war something concrete and 
tangible, that they can tack on to their kingdom or 
empire, and that will show on the map and in the 
balance sheet. They want all they can get, even if 
they pay for it by future wars. 

Thus in every country, not even excluding the 
United States, two motives enter into the war spirit. 
One is the ambition to end war, to promote interna- 
tionalism, to destroy militarism ; the other is a desire 
for concrete imperialistic gains. Upon the whole, 
the average soldier and the average citizen are more 
aware of the first than of the second motive. Of 
the British volunteers hundreds of thousands would 
never have enlisted save for Belgium; you could not 
have bribed these men by any hope of trade advan- 
tage or other aggrandizement. In France also, as 



SPOILING THE ENEMY 107 

in Italy, Belgium and Russia, millions wanted noth- 
ing but justice and international peace. Yet, as 
matters then stood, these millions did not decide 
the joint policy of the Alliance. That Alliance, 
growing out of the former European anarchy, was 
held together by greed, revenge and the lust for con- 
quered territory. From the Allied point of view 
the war threatened to become, what from the Ger- 
man side it had largely been from the beginning, a 
war of national aggression, a war for booty. 1 

That booty took three forms: money, trade ad- 
vantages, territory. The money was to be secured 
by the levy of crushing indemnities; the trade ad- 
vantages by a commercial war after the war; the 
territory desired was to be taken from Austria- 
Hungary and Turkey, from Germany, and possibly 
Bulgaria. 2 

A demand for indemnities lay on the surface. It 
sought justification in the desire to be recompensed 
for actual losses incurred, in a wish to punish Ger- 
many and finally in the theory that a Germany weak- 

i It may perhaps be urged that not only are many of the terri- 
torial demands of the Allies reasonable and just (which claim of 
course would be readily granted) but that it is better to concede 
even an unjust and exorbitant demand of a potential ally than, by 
alienating him, permit the victory of the enemy. There is of course 
no hard and fast line to be drawn here. What seems actually to 
have happened, however, is that the Allies have really weakened 
their morale, and with it their military power, with every new 
engagement, violative of internationalism, into which they have en- 
tered. 

2 To say nothing of Persia, Albania, Abyssinia and China. 



108 THE END OF THE WAR 

ened by such exactions would be unable to renew the 
attack upon the Allies. 

To begin with the more extreme advocates of in- 
demnities, let us quote Mr. L. J. Maxse, editor of the 
National Reviciv. ''The main object of peace," he 
contended, ''should be to crush and permanently 
cripple Prussia. . . . Surely if the Prussians lose it 
is for them to pay and for the Allies to receive the 
milliards. If the process of payment reduces Ger- 
man Kultur to be a hewer of wood and drawer of 
water for the rest of the century for European civil- 
ization, so much the better for the world." 1 

From France one heard the same cry. Here is 
how M. Stephen Pichon of the (Paris) Petit Journal 
addressed Germany. "You will have to reimburse 
the Allies for all the costs of the war, and this will 
be an enormous sum. But this is not all. You will 
have to pay for the cathedrals, the museums, the 
palaces, the huts, you bombarded and burned, the 
butcheries you committed, for the widows and 
orphans you have made. That will make billions 
and billions that you will have to pay us. no! 
Not at once, for you could not do that. ... It will 

i Cited by Stoddard, op. cit. p. 30. Mr. Maxse, who may be pre- 
sumed to know England, obviously feared, however, that many Eng- 
lishmen would desire to be lenient towards a defeated Germany. 
"We know the Rt, Hon. Faintheart and the Rt. Hon Feebleguts too 
well to suppose that the (present stern) mood will last and that 
he will remain robust when the Rhine Whine sets in. Then our 
bleaters will give tongue and our 'blighters' will chip in. We shall 
see the old Potsdam Press in full working order, devoted by day 
and by night to the sacred cause of 'letting off the Boche.' " 



SPOILING THE ENEMY 109 

take you a long time — ten years, twenty years, thirty 
years. . . . Until Germany has paid this off, Bus- 
sian garrisons will occupy Breslau and Dresden, 
English garrisons Hamburg and Frankfort, a Bel- 
gian garrison shall occupy Cologne, a French one 
Coblenz and Mainz. Only after the last penny has 
been paid will the Allies withdraw, and even then 
not until after they have blown up the last German 
fortress." * 

In similar vein, M. Onesime Reclus: "The stink- 
ing beast is down! We are going to divide up its 
flesh and its bones. We will make of it (Germany) 
an insolvent debtor." 2 Other writers desire to an- 
nex the great coal and iron deposits of Western 
Germany as part of a readily collected indemnity. 

The argument against punitive indemnities levied 
upon Germany does not rest upon any assumption 
of her innocence or modesty. Germany has de- 
prived herself of the right to protest. No one can 
read the terrifying anthology of her imperialistic 
literature, collected by S. Grumbach, 3 without con- 
stantly encountering the most brutal plans for mulct- 
ing her victims. Her record in 1871 and in the illegal 
and extortionate requisitions upon Belgium since 

i Stoddard, op cit. pp. 5], 52. 

2 Published in "Le Hhin Francais" in the summer of 1015; quoted 
by Stoddard, op cit. pp. 53. 54. 

3 Das annexionistische Deutschland, Five Sammlung von Dokumen- 
ten, die seit dem //, August, 191 Jjf, in Deutschland ocffe.nilich oder 
geheim verbreitet wurden, by S. Grumbach, Lausanne, 1917. 



110 THE END OF THE WAR 

1914 is irredeemably bad. Yet a similar attitude on 
the part of Germany's enemies is irreconcilable with 
the higher principles they profess. Moreover ade- 
quate compensation is utterly impossible. The al- 
lied losses incurred in this War will by August, 1918 
far exceed a hundred billion dollars, a sum in excess 
of the total national wealth of the Central Powers. 
The indemnity is uncollectible. Even an attempt 
to collect would reduce Germany to starvation by 
annihilating her industry. Facing such terms any 
nation would fight until her entire wealth, to be used 
for an eventual indemnity, was spent in killing her 
enemies. To occupy Germany until the Allied de- 
mands were met would be to occupy her for ever. 
It cannot be done. ''Non-German Europe," says 
Mr. Bernard Shaw, "is not going to spend the re- 
mainder of the duration of this planet sitting on Ger- 
many's head. A head with the brains of sixty mil- 
lions of people in it takes more sitting on than we 
shall have time for." 1 

Even a lesser indemnity, an infliction of a few 
tens of billions, would meet with insuperable diffi- 
culties. Experience teaches that punitive imposi- 
tions are likely to reach enormous proportions, when 
each of a group of Powers seeks to secure the largest 
share. The Boxer indemnities are a case in point. 
Here exorbitant demands were made on China by 
six nations, especially by Germany, France and Rus- 

iThe New Republic, Vol. 9; Jan. 6, 1917. 



SPOILING THE ENEMY 111 

sia. Similarly an attempt by a group of exigent 
victors to levy indemnities upon a prostrate Ger- 
many might cause dangerous dissensions. 1 

There remains one form of indemnification which 
would bring in large sums, what we may perhaps 
call the indemnity by evacuation. It is a device by 
which the inhabitants of a conquered territory, such 
as French Lorraine or Westphalia, are to be driven 
from the land, and their property seized, with an 
amiable recommendation to their own government 
to reimburse them. Such a savage proposal has 
actually been made by the cartell magnates of Ger- 
many. It is difficult to believe, however, that a plan, 
so abhorrent to our fundamental conceptions of in- 
ternational morality will be adopted by the Allies. 

The demand for trade discrimination after the 
war is in accord with the same principle of seeking 
to punish the German people. Its central idea is 
the permanent crushing of Germany. She is to be 
denied access to foreign markets, refused raw ma- 
terials, slowly throttled by an economic constriction. 
If the military war were nothing but an incident in 
an abiding struggle, such a commercial policy would 
be a legitimate act of defence and aggression, since 
a nation may be wounded and destroyed economically 

i Against an indemnification by Germany of Belgium alone, or of 
a rebuilding of devastated portions of Europe at the joint expense 
of all Powers, the same objections do not apply. Such costs could 
be assessed by a Board of Arbitration working under rules agreed 
to at the Peace Conference. 



112 THE END OF THE WAR 

as effectively as by arms. If Germany were to re- 
main bellicose and were to continue the contest in 
the shape of an intensified military preparation, 
which is war, the Allies would be justified in using 
their deadliest economic weapons. Today this Al- 
lied threat of a war after the war merely emphasizes 
the fact that though Germany holds certain terri- 
tory of the Allies, they in turn hold the key to her 
economic life. It is a conclusive answer to her tri- 
umphant demand that we look "at the war map." 
As an enduring institution, however, in a world look- 
ing to peace, such a boycotting of the victim is utterly 
destructive and reactionary. Its adoption would set 
back the world many decades. It would injure both 
the boycotted and the boycotters. It would be a con- 
tinuation of war, a new incentive to war. 1 

i The economic war after the war is not to be interpreted as a 
mere continuation of the old protectionist policy of the nations. The 
primary aim of that policy was to benefit the home industry whereas 
the avowed object of the economic war is to injure the enemy. 
What the effect would be upon the home industry has been described 
by several free traders. "French protectionists demand the repeal 
of Article II of the Treaty of Frankfort, which assured most favoured- 
nation treatment to France and the German Empire. Many who are 
most anxious to annihilate German trade propose to keep out Ger- 
man goods by means of more or less prohibitive customs duties. 
They forget, in their simplicity, that customs duties are paid by the 
consumers, not the producers. Suppose they treble the duty on 
coal coming from Germany. It is the French metallurgical industry 
which suffers. If they increase the duties on dyes they injure the 
French textile industries. If they want to make at home the ma- 
chinery which France imported to the value of £5,000,000 in 1<J13, 
they adversely affect all French industries dependent on it." "The 
Causes and Consequences of the War," by Yves Guyot. Translated 
by F. Appleby Holt, London, 19 1G, p. 325. 



SPOILING THE ENEMY 113 

The demands for new territorial possessions is 
the greatest obstacle of all, both to a peace based on 
internationalism and to the winning of the war. 
Serbia, Koumania, Italy and Russia have staked out 
claims in Austria-Hungary ; Greece, Italy, England, 
France, and Russia have wished to divide the Turk- 
ish Empire, while the former German Colonies were 
destined to be delivered to various new owners. 
The demands of the extremists went very far in- 
deed. The imperialists suddenly awakened and de- 
manded that their dreams be realized. 

Ignoring all extremists, however, what were the 
official demands of the Allied governments'? 

On January 10, 1917, the Allied governments ad- 
dressed a note to President Wilson in reply to his 
request that they definitely state terms. It was a 
cleverly written note, designed to unite all the na- 
tions opposed to Germany by giving to each what 
each demanded. It was a glorified Rivers and Har- 
bours Bill. 

Today (February, 1918), this note is out of date 
and without further sanction. Yet it has not been 
withdrawn, nor has it been superseded by a subse- 
quent joint statement of Allied terms. For this 
reason and because of the expression that it gives to 
the former hopes of Allied imperialists, the note 
is still worthy of quotation. Their " objects" 
in this war, the Allies explained, "will not be 
made known in detail with all the equitable com- 



114 THE END OF THE WAR 

pensation and indemnities for damages suffered 
until the hour of negotiations. But the civilized 
world knows that they imply, in all necessity and 
in the first instance, the restoration of Belgium, of 
Serbia and of Montenegro, and the indemnities which 
are due them; the evacuation of the invaded terri- 
tories of France, of Russia and of Rumania, with 
just reparation; the reorganization of Europe, guar- 
anteed by a stable regime and founded as much upon 
respect of nationalities and full security and liberty 
of economic development, which all nations, great or 
small, possess, as upon territorial conventions and 
international agreements, suitable to guarantee ter- 
ritorial and maritime frontiers against unjustified 
attacks; the restitution of provinces or territories 
wrested in the past from the Allies by force or 
against the will of their populations ; the liberation 
of Italians, of Slavs, of Rumanians, and of Tcheco- 
Slovaques from foreign domination; the enfran- 
chisement of populations subject to the bloody 
tyranny of the Turks; the expulsion from Europe 
of the Ottoman Empire. . . . The intentions of His 
Majesty, the Emperor of Russia, regarding Poland 
have been clearly indicated in the proclamation 
which he has just addressed to his armies." 

Upon investigation this Allied statement proved to 
be intentionally ambiguous. Designed to hold to- 
gether both liberals and imperialists, it might be in- 
terpreted as a minimum and as a maximum pro- 



SPOILING THE ENEMY 115 

gram. What, however, it was obviously intended 
to mean to the interested parties, was that their in- 
terests would be maintained. All past promises, 
however dubious, were to be fulfilled. Into the 
moral system of the Allies, into a demand for 
" Restitution, Reparation and Guarantee" the 
rights of small nations and the destruction of Prus- 
sian militarism, there was to be woven a fabric of 
specific national demands, in real opposition to the 
idealistic program. To defeat Prussian Militar- 
ism, Japan was to keep Chinese territory, while Rus- 
sia was to be given Constantinople, Roumania the 
sovereignty of territories in which were few of her 
nationals, and Italy lands to which she had no just 
claim. 

What these dubious statements really meant to 
the imperialists was later revealed. "The secret 
agreements entered into by the Allies," says a 
writer in The New Europe in July, 1917, "are not 
consistent with the ideals of their populations. The 
secret Convention of April 27, (26), 1915, with Italy, 
the treaty with Roumania are both based on the prin- 
ciple of grab." "The arrangement concluded with 
Roumania last year, after much bargaining, as- 
signed to Roumania regions outside her ethnograph- 
ical limits, to which she has no publicly defensible 
moral claim. For these arrangements the respon- 
sibility belongs chiefly to the pre-Revolutionary 
Government of Russia and to the Roumanian Pre- 



116 THE END OF THE WAR 

mier, Mr. Bratianu. While upholding to the full the 
claims of Eoumania to national unity, the Allied 
peoples cannot in conscience sanction the allotment 
to Eoumania of districts in the Banat and the Cen- 
tral Hungarian plain where the Roumanian popula- 
tion is either non-existent or is vastly outnumbered 
by Serbs and Magyars." x 

Nor were the Italian and Roumanian agreements 
unique in violating the spirit of internationalism. 
On November 22nd, 1914, Russia, England and 
France offered to Greece the southern portion of 
Albania, with the exception of Valona, in the event 
of her immediate entry in aid of Serbia, and on Jan- 
uary 12th, 1915, important territorial acquisitions on 
the coast of Asia Minor. 2 As a result of negotia- 
tions in London and Petrograd in the spring of 1916 
the British, French and Russian governments agreed 
with regard to the future distribution not only of 

i The New Europe, 7/19/17, An interesting revelation of the state 
of mind produced among the Allied diplomats by all this haggling 
over territories is revealed by a report of General Polivanoff on 
November 7-20, 1916, suggesting a revision of the terms of territorial 
compensations to Roumania. This Russian General seems not at all 
disconcerted by the Roumanian defeat. "If," he says, "things had 
developed in such a way that the military and political agreement 
of 1916 with Roumania had been fully realized, then a very strong 
State would have arisen in the Balkans . . . with a population of 
about 13,000,000. In the future this State could hardly have been 
friendly disposed towards Russia." "Consequently the collapse of 
Roumania's plans as a Great Power is not particularly opposed to 
Russia's interests." 

2 See the confidential memorandum (exact source not indicated) 
made public by the Bolsheviki at Petrograd and republished with the 
secret treaties in the New York Evening Post. 



SPOILING THE ENEMY 117 

their territorial acquisitions, but also of their zones 
of influence in Asiatic Turkey. The agreement, 
which is detailed, provides that these powers " as- 
sume a proportionate share of the Ottoman debt 
equivalent to their respective acquisitions." 1 

These plans of conquest were far-reaching, and no 
attempt was made to bring them into harmony with 
the aspirations of the Entente peoples. In a secret 
telegram to the Russian Ambassador in Paris, dated 
February 24, 19.1.6, the Russian Foreign Secretary 
reveals the policy and spirit of these governments 
and their future attitude toward a defeated Ger- 
many. "Political agreements," he says, "entered 
into among the Allies during the war should 
remain unalterable and are not subject to revision. 
This refers to our agreement with France and Eng- 
land about Constantinople and the Straits, Syria 
and Asia Minor, and also to the London agreement 
with Italy. All propositions as to future boundaries 
as to Central Europe are at this moment premature, 
but at the same time it is to be remembered that we 
are ready to grant to France and England complete 
freedom in fixing the limitations of the western 
German boundary, depending that the Allies in their 
turn will grant to us freedom in fixing our boundar- 
ies with Germany and Austria. It is important to 
insist on the exclusion of the Polish question as a 

i Information on the question of Asia Minor February 21, 1918, 
included in the statements given out by the Bolsheviki. 



118 THE END OF THE WAE 

subject matter for international discussion, and on 
elimination of all attempts to place the future of 
Poland under the guarantee and control of the 
powers. ' ' 

Just what territorial claims Russia would have 
made had Germany been completely defeated can- 
not yet be known in detail, but the French claims are 
revealed in a note of the Kussian Minister of Foreign 
Affairs to the French Ambassador in Petrograd un- 
der date of February 1st, 1917. 

"In your note of this date," writes the Foreign 
Minister, "your Excellency was good enough to 
communicate to the Imperial Government, that the 
Government of the Republic intended to include 
among the terms of peace which will be offered to 
Germany the following demands and guarantees of 
territorial character: 

"1. Alsace and Lorraine to be returned to France. 

"2. The boundaries will be extended at least to 
the limits of the former principality of Lorraine, 
and will be fixed under the direction of the French 
Government. At the same time strategic demands 
must be taken into consideration, so as to include 
within the French territory the whole of the indus- 
trial iron basin of Lorraine and the whole of the 
industrial coal-basin of the Valley of the Saar. 

"3. Other territories located on the left bank of 
the Rhine, and not included in the composition of 
the German Empire, will be completely separated 



SPOILING THE ENEMY 119 

from Germany and shall be freed from all political 
and economic dependence on her. 

"4. The territory on the left bank of the Rhine 
not included in the composition of French territory, 
shall form an autonomous and neutral government, 
and shall be occupied by French armies until such 
time as the enemy governments completely fulfil all 
the conditions and guarantees mentioned in the 
treaty of peace. 

"Your Excellency stated that the Government of 
the Republic shall be happy to have the opportunity 
of counting upon the support of the Imperial Gov- 
ernment in order to bring its intentions to accom- 
plishment. In accordance with the order of his Im- 
perial Majesty, my august sovereign, I have the 
honour to communicate in this note in the name of 
the Russian Government, to your Excellency that 
the Government of the Republic may count on the 
support of the Imperial Government to bring to ful- 
filment of its aforementioned intentions." 

What is most highly objectionable in all these 
treaties is that they constitute a program, not dic- 
tated by a sense of international justice, nor by a 
desire to produce a better international order, but 
by self-interest. Moreover that self-interest is not 
of the Allies as a whole but of each individual Ally. 
In this war the aid of nations has been bargained 
for in much the spirit in which George the Third 
bargained for his Hessians. Herein lies a manifold 



120 THE END OF THE WAR 

danger. Not only is it likely to prolong the war 
beyond the time when a real victory for internation- 
alism has been secured, not only may it make the 
issue itself dubious, but it is exactly the sort of 
situation out of which arose the Second Balkan War 
and many other wars in history. Even the pre- 
sumed beneficiaries of these arrangements may ul- 
timately regret their having been made. A promise 
to Italy of the East Adriatic might be pleasing to 
Italians today but in the end might prove a fatal 
gift. 



CHAPTEE VI 

SACRED EGOISM 

In this war Italy has suffered at the hands of her 
friends. It is her own statesmen as well as many 
of her officious apologists in foreign countries who 
have lauded her policy as one of naked egoism, un- 
ashamed and boastful. Yet there is another Italy, 
fine-spirited and generous, which fights for as high 
ideals and as noble purposes as in the days of the 
Risorgimiento and is heavens above the chaffering 
group of politicians and journalists who have ac- 
tually controlled her policy in this war. When, 
therefore, in this chapter I speak of Italy I have in 
mind not the whole population, and not at all her 
ardent democrats and liberals, but a little band of 
ultra-nationalists, who at a critical moment caught 
the common imagination and confidently and igno- 
rantly led the people to disaster. 

Italy, declare her apologists, "is waging above all 
a war of expansion and conquest." The Italian 
population "set out for this war, for 'its war,' with 
the most definite idea of its interests. It was in- 
formed, and it perfectly understood, that it was not 
waging a war for the sake of magnificence nor for 
the sake of principles; that it was fighting for it- 

121 



122 THE END OF THE WAR 

self, but not for its neighbours." Italy "does not 
care to be generous and to lose thereby. She 
strongly objects to sacrifice; so that this State, 
founded on the principle of nationalities, which has 
benefitted in the past by the enthusiasm aroused by 
the cause of the peoples, refuses — and quite frankly 
— to obey this principle blindly, unreservedly to 
champion this cause. ' ' * Italy has no patience, with 
what Benedetto Croce calls, "hollow theories con- 
cerning the democratic ideal and the reign of peace 
and justice." 2 Italy is no sentimental ideologist, 
but is realistic, as Germany is. She sees her in- 
terests and pursues them, as Germany pursues her 
interests. She knows what she wants and how to 
get what she wants. At least she thinks she knows. 
From the beginning of the war Italy made her 
national interest the controlling factor in her policy. 
Although a member of the Triple Alliance, she 
promptly — and properly — refused to march with 
Austria. This decision was of immense value to 
the Allies, for had she invaded France in August, 
1914 the Maine would have been lost and a perma- 
nent German victory assured. Many reasons jus- 
tified Italy's rupture of her union with Austria. 
She had been ignored by her titular allies; neither 
her interests nor her ideals had been considered. 

i "Italy and the War," by Jacques Bainville; translated by Bernard 
Miall, London, New York and Toronto, 1916, pp. 237-238. 

2 Benedetto Croce, in the Critica ; quoted by Bainville, op. cit., 
p. 123. 



SACRED EGOISM 123 

Her world position would have been made worse, 
not better, by a German- Austrian victory. 

For nine months thereafter, Italy preserved a 
neutral attitude. She was internally divided. The 
majority of Italians, especially the Republicans, 
Radicals and Syndicalists sympathized with the Al- 
lies, while many of her Catholics and Conservatives 
favoured the Teutonic Powers. As time passed, 
however, as the early expectations of a rapid Ger- 
man victory were extinguished and as news came of 
German brutalities, a somewhat inconstant enthusi- 
asm for France, heroically bearing the brunt of in- 
vasion, spread through the peninsula. 

Nevertheless potent reasons inclined the nation 
to neutrality. Italy is desperately poor. She has 
neither the fertile lands nor the rich mineral wealth 
of her great neighbours, and her increasing popula- 
tion, despite an immense emigration, presses heavily 
upon her resources. Politically she is unstable. 
The roseate dreams of a healthy national Italian 
development, which filled the minds of idealists a 
generation ago, have not been realized. Until 1913 
the government was in the hands of a selfish, narrow 
group, recruited from the upper and middle classes, 
and maintained in power by a limited parliamentary 
franchise. Political corruption flourished under the 
system of trasformismo and a government by "po- 
litical war-horses" evoked bitter reactionary and 
revolutionary opposition, and promoted a danger- 



124 THE END OF THE WAR 

ous anti-parliamentarism. Social conditions were 
bad; illiteracy was common; and enlightened pa- 
triotism, rising above factional and personal inter- 
ests, rare. The need of the nation was peace and 
a steady economic development. 

But peace was impossible for the very reasons 
which made it imperatively necessary. The fragil- 
ity and disequilibrium of the social structure cre- 
ated an unrest, which among many Italians found ex- 
pression in a crude, pretentiously realistic, but, in 
any true sense, completely unrealistic, Imperialism. 
Though urged to remain neutral by its unprepared- 
ness, its internal divisions and by the economic ad- 
vantages of peace the nation was forced, partly by 
its idealists but chiefly by its vaulting imperialists 
into a policy of war and conquest. 

To analyse the motives of a government with 
which we are acting in concert is a thankless task. 
It is impossible, however, properly to prepare for 
the difficult problem of working out a peace policy 
without understanding the curiously dual nature of 
this war, and in no instance is that duality so il- 
luminating as in the Italian intervention. For while 
not a few Italians urged participation because de- 
sirous of ending German militarism, the main cur- 
rent bearing the nation into war was avowedly 
egoistic, nationalistic and imperialistic. Italy, 
weak, ignorant, distracted, sought to become a World 
Power, to revive the glories of Venice, to restore in 



SACRED EGOISM 125 

some part the vast Mediterranean Empire of An- 
cient Rome. 1 

All through the recent Italian nationalistic litera- 
ture runs this disconcerting parallel between the 
new Kingdom and the Ancient Empire. The poet 
d Annunzio, to take but a single example, is for ever 
recalling the glory of Rome, the deeds of Rome, the 
heritage of Rome. What Rome accomplished in the 
days of the Caesars, Italy in her narrow peninsula, 
surrounded by more powerful nations, must aspire 
to achieve in these days of steam, electricity and 
cartells. Admitting the virility and sheer propul- 
sive force of the Italian population, the ambition 
still remains grotesque. Under the most favourable 
circumstances, Italy's future role in the economic 
and political world must necessarily be secondary. 
Compared to Russia, the British Empire, the United 
States or Germany, Italy is small and will remain 

i "As in all great moments of national decision, the motives which 
inspired Italy were mixed; being compounded of every shade of opin- 
ion, from the purest Mazzinian idealism to the sacro egoisnio of cer- 
tain government circles and the naked and unashamed Jingoism of 
the so-called Nationalists. While the latter were never tired of 
pouring ridicule on the assumption that the great struggle is one 
between Imperialism and Democracy, and insisted on regarding it as 
an open bid by rival forces for the mastery of Europe, even the Cor- 
rierc della Sera, whose immense inlluence in Italy is due to the fact 
that it voices the opinion of the more sober and constructive elements 
in the country, justified action as follows: 'Politics are the quint- 
essence of egoism, and we are egoists Let us simply reckon up our 
rights and our aspirations in relation to our forces'" Review of 
L'ltalie et le Confl.it Europeen ( J91.' f -16) : Jean Alazard, Paris, 1916, 
by R. W. S. W. The New Europe, Vol. IV, September 20, 1917, 
p. 317. 



126 THE END OF THE WAR 

small. She has no more chance of emulating Rome 
than has Greece of becoming a second Byzantium 
or Spain of restoring the empire of Philip the Sec- 
ond. She may possibly succeed in a policy of timid 
imperialism, in getting and holding the East Adri- 
atic and a part of Asia Minor. To dream of a vast 
Empire, however, to dissipate her energies in the 
ambitious project of resurrecting Ancient Rome is 
not only a perilous task, ludicrously beyond her ca- 
pacity, but a menace to Italy's neighbours only less 
serious than to Italy herself. 

Today this imperialistic ambition overwhelms mil- 
lions of Italians. The words Per la piu grande 
Italia are scribbled on blank walls and on infinite 
reams of patient paper. This conception of a 
Greater Italy is an ideal of a sort, and, as Mr. Syd- 
ney Low approvingly remarks in a fawning book, 
which one wonders how he could have written, "The 
ideal is to be attained by the highly practical method 
of seizing territory, ports, islands, railways, strips 
of coast-line, naval bases." These imperialists 
"are dreamers whose heads are not in the clouds, 
poets who will not be content with a diet of the most 
inspiring phrases, enthusiasts who mean busi- 
ness." * 

Some of the business, upon which these Italian im- 
perialists are engaged, is legitimate and proper. 
Italy was not without justification for her hatred of 

i "Italy in the War," by Sydney Low, New York, 1916, p. 238. 



SACRED EGOISM 127 

Austria, whose long persecution might in time have 
been forgotten had not the stupid government of 
Francis Joseph persisted in petty persecution of 
the Italians in Trieste, and had not Austria long in- 
sisted upon retaining the Trentino, which geograph- 
ically, ethnologically and economically belongs to 
Italy. Much of the territory to which Italy has a 
real right had indeed been promised by Austria as 
the price of neutrality, but whether Austria could 
have been trusted to keep her promises, or whether 
she might not have taken away what she had given 
under duress, was a serious question. 1 

The demands of the extreme Imperialists of Italy, 
however, went much further. Several of them de- 
sired not only the Trentino, Istria and Dalmatia but 
had lingering hopes of eventually securing Corsica, 
Savoy, Nice and Tunis from France, Malta from 
England, and the Ticino from Switzerland. Natur- 
ally these latter desires were inopportune, but in 
their stead, other lands lay at the disposal of the 
victorious Allies. There was Rhodes lying off the 
coast of Asia Minor, there were several iEgean 
islands and there was a large tract of Asiatic 
Turkey, which might properly fall to Italy. "We 
trust," said the Bassegna Nazionale, in the spring 
of 1915, "that there will be reserved for us, in the 

i "Austria had indeed just offered Italy the Trentino, the west 
bank of the Isonzo, special privileges and full cultural guarantees 
for all Italians left under Austrian rule, and a free hand for Italy 
in Albania" Stoddard, p. 168. 



128 THE END OF THE WAR 

Mediterranean, in the .ZEgean, and in Asia Minor, a 
share proportionate to the requirements of our posi- 
tion. " 1 It was obvious that Italy was still un- 
satisfied with vast desert Tripoli, which she had 
recently conquered. She wanted more fertile soils. 
"There is only one land," said an Italian writer in 
the Edinburgh Review, "wherein Italy can still hope 
to found colonies of Italian laborers, and that is 
Asiatic Turkey." 2 

In the end these Italian imperialists captured the 
government. A protracted bargaining with Aus- 
tria raised the price which the importunate Allies 
were willing to pay. 3 Finally the terms were ac- 
cepted and Italy declared war. 

Since the bargain was struck, hardly a month has 
passed that the Allies have not been disagreeably 
reminded of these pledges. 4 Uncomfortable indeed 

i Stoddard, 105. 

2 Stoddard, 1G5. 

3 "When we review such semi-official press utterances . . ., together 
with the numberless imperialistic incitements to war . . ., it is 
difficult not to believe that the Salandra Cabinet had already made 
up its mind on intervention, and that it was using the negotiations 
with the Teutonic Powers as part of a clever combinazione to extract 
the largest possible concessions from the Allied Powers, with whom 
parallel negotiations were going on at the same time." "Present- 
Day Europe. Its National States of Mind," by T. Lathrop Stoddard, 
New York, 1917, p. 166. 

* According to a telegram from Petrograd to the Manchester 
Guardian, December 1, 1917. "A treaty between the Allies and 
Italy is published today (November 28) according to which Italy 
receives the Trentino, South Tyrol, Trieste, I stria, Dalmatia, with 
the neutral zone between the latter region and Serbia. In the south 
the Adriatic region from the river Planka to the Drina goes to 
Serbia. Italy receives Vallona and the hinterland. Italy agrees not 



SACKED EGOISM 129 

are some of the implications of this solemn covenant 
between the nations fighting for democracy and the 
Italian Royal Government inspired by sacred ego- 
ism. Were Austria willing to make a separate 
peace, acceptable to England, France and the United 
States, would Italy consent? Would she not de- 
mand a full liquidation of her bond, Istria, Dalmatia 
and the rest? And if the Allies agree to a partial 
dismemberment in the interest of Italy, can they 
refuse the less shadowy claims of Serbia and 
Roumania? Is any separate peace with Turkey 
possible which takes from the Turks a part of Asia 
Minor, and subjects to Italian domination a territory 
in which there is not even a trace of Italian blood or 
culture? That way Italy blocks. 

Again, take the Balkan situation. Though the 
question is too complicated to be put into a para- 
graph, yet according to experts it is believed to have 
been possible to discover a reasonably satisfactory 
solution of the problem and to have settled the rival 
claims of Bulgaria, Serbia and Greece along approx- 

to oppose England, France, and Russia in the partition of Albania 
between Montenegro and Serbia, if such be deemed desirable. Italy 
receives Dodecanese and Adalia in Asiatic Turkey. In the event of 
British-French colonial expansion in Africa at the expense of Ger- 
many, Italy receives compensation in the right to expand the terri- 
tory of Eritrea, Somaliland, Livia, into the hinterland. England/ 
France, and Kussia undertake to support Italy against the Holy See 
if the latter attempts to take steps toward peace." The full text of 
this treaty, which was signed on April 26. 1915, by Sir Edward 
Grey, Cambon, Marquis Imperiali, and Count Benckendorf, is pub- 
lished in full (in English) by the New York Evening Post, January 
25, 1918. 



130 THE END OF THE WAR 

imately nationalistic lines. Such a settlement would 
not have been perfect but might at least have pro- 
moted peace in that distracted quarter. 1 Had some 
such arrangement been possible in 1915, the Balkan 
Confederation might have been restored, the 
Balkan corridor closed, Turkey isolated, and the 
war brought a year or more nearer to a conclu- 
sion. But against such a solution the claims of the 
Italian government proved an insuperable obstacle. 
Italy stood opposed to any solution which would rob 
her of her desired control of the East Adriatic. 2 

Among the Allies there are many eloquent and 
sincere defenders of this narrow policy of Italy. 
''Egoism," insists M. Bainville, "when it is the ego- 
ism of a nation, becomes a duty and a virtue. It be- 
comes purified. Does it not affect the fate of mil- 
lions of living creatures, millions of millions of men 

i See for the general outline of such a plan "The Reconstruction 
of Poland and the Near East," by Herbert Adams Gibbons, N. Y., 
1917, pp. 194-202. 

2 "The contemporary school of Italian imperialists have lost their 
heads entirely. If the statesmen of the Entente Powers had 
studied closely the literature and the programs of the Dante Ali- 
ghieri Society and the Dalmatian League, and followed the develop- 
ment of the colonial and irredentist propagandas during the last 
decade, they would have supported with all their power Signor Gio- 
litti and the nonintervention elements in the spring of 1915." Italy's 
"active participation in the war on the side of the Entente has been 
beneficial neither to the Entente nor to Italy. The statesmen of 
France, Great Britain and Russia have come to realize that Italian 
irredentists and imperialists are without shame or limit in their 
ambitions and are incapable of constructive political vision. They 
have had to yield to Italian demands, though, in order to keep the 
coalition intact. The result has been the sacrifice of the Serbians 
and the loss of Greek aid." Gibbons, op tit., pp. 181, 182, 183. 



SACRED EGOISM 131 

yet to be born? Those Governments which have not 
this sense of egoism are guilty; they are danger- 
ously mischievous." 

National egoism may be good or bad, wise or fool- 
ish, according to the circumstances, though it be- 
comes neither good nor wise by being called sacred. 
It is, however, an interesting question in interna- 
tional morality at exactly what point the interest of 
these "millions of living creatures" should be ac- 
commodated to the interests of other millions living 
across the border. To be guided by national egoism 
alone is to justify the invasion of Belgium, the sub- 
jection of minor nationalities, and other acts which 
nations as egoistic but less frank than Italy have 
repeatedly committed. It is not for us to pass judg- 
ment. We need not answer the question whether 
Italy was justified in standing upon the side-lines 
and offering her army and navy at a price. Nor is it 
our special concern whether in their extremity the 
Allies, to gain an ally, were justified in making con- 
cessions which violated their principles. What 
does seem evident, however, is that we who were not 
consulted in all this grandiose huckstering, are not 
bound by the bargain. We accepted no responsibil- 
ity. We are fighting for democracy and interna- 
tionalism and against militarism. We are fighting 
for the freedom of the Italians of the Trentino and 
Trieste, as for other oppressed peoples, but we are 
not fighting for Italian imperialism. We will not 



132 THE END OF THE WAR 

send our young men to die that Italy may rule over 
the Slavs and Dalmatia. 

And this for four reasons. The Italian scheme of 
conquest is not in the true and permanent interest of 
Italy herself. A giving to Italy of all that has been 
promised would mean new wars. The program for 
which Italy fights is opposed to the ideals for which 
we fight. Finally to continue the war until Italy 
gets what she wants is to prolong the contest, to 
make victory dubious and peace dangerous. 

Not that Italy should be content with the ante- 
bellum conditions. When we consider the mag- 
nitude of her emigration we cannot but sympathize 
with her desire for lands under her own flag to which 
these emigrants might go. The need of Italy in this 
respect is far greater than that of Germany. Today 
there are some six million Italians under foreign 
flags, or one seventh of the entire Italian people. On 
the other hand, no one can study contemporary 
Italian conditions without realizing how immature, 
politically and economically, the nation is, and there- 
fore how ill-equipped for a stern imperialistic strug- 
gle. 

The facts, upon which this conclusion is based, 
lie upon the surface. Italy's excessive death rate, 
her high, though decreasing, illiteracy rate, the rudi- 
mentary character of her national education, the vast 
amount of her semi-pauperism, her low standards of 
living, her heavy taxes, her unstable and low-grade 



SACRED EGOISM 133 

political life, her lack of great resources — all these 
indicate an internal weakness, as compared with her 
great imperialistic competitors, a weakness which 
almost hopelessly handicaps her in her ambitious 
projects. For Italy to be awarded the East Adriatic 
might be a curse instead of a blessing. It would 
create for her what Giolitti called "an inverse irre- 
dentism," forcing her to maintain great armies in 
order to suppress unruly Slavs. It would mean op- 
pression abroad and reaction at home. It would 
bring her into eventual conflict with Serbia, with 
Greece, possibly with greater nations. It might 
mean defeat, it might even mean catastrophe. 

That such a victory would render new wars prob- 
able is made evident by present currents of opinion 
in the peninsula. Italy today hates Serbia more 
than Germany, and Greece more than Serbia. She 
distrusts Russia. Her attitude towards the Adri- 
atic Slavs can be read in d'Annunzio's speeches. 
Dalmatia, he asserts, "belongs to Italy by human 
law and divine. Under the Latin rule of Rome, of 
the Popes and of Venice, as under the barbarian rule 
of the Goths, the Lombards, the Franks, the Ger- 
manic Othos, the Byzantines, the Hungarians, the 
Austrians, the civil life of yonder shores, like the 
civil life of our own, has always been Italian in 
essence and origin. It has been; it is; it will be. 
Neither the German, coming from the Alps, nor the 
Slovenian of the Carso, nor the Magyar of La Putza, 



134 THE END OF THE WAR 

nor the Croat, who ignores or falsifies history, nor 
the Turk, who disguises himself as an Albanian — no 
one, I say, will succeed in arresting the inevitable 
rhythm of accomplishment, the Roman rhythm. ' ' f 
Of this Dalmatian population, so confidently an- 
nexed, only three per cent is Italian ; yet millions of 
Slavs are to be shut off from the sea in order not to 
arrest the Roman rhythm. Out of this same fear of 
a future Slav and Greek opposition, Italy seems to 
desire that Austria, after being weakened by her, 
shall be kept strong enough to hold the Balkan peo- 
ples in check. She apparently does not desire a dis- 
solution of the Dual Monarchy. She wishes to rest 
upon the " Austrian cushion" after abstracting as 
many feathers as she pleases. 

The Italian imperialists frankly avow that their 
demands are opposed to the policies of internation- 
alism, in defence of which we are fighting. Influ- 
ential elements in the population are strongly in 
sympathy with German militarism and envy Ger- 
many 's army and the power which brought her great 
plans of expansion within the expectation of suc- 
cess. The Italian program is like the German; it 
takes no account of the rights of lesser nationali- 
ties, or of the economic demands of German and 
Slavic Hint erla end er which it would deprive of their 
outlet by an occupation of Trieste and the East 
Adriatic. 

1 Bainville, op. cit., pp. 254-5. 



SACRED EGOISM 135 

Finally to satisfy Italy's ambitions means to pro- 
long the war. Nothing has so strengthened the re- 
sistance of the Austro-Hungarian Empire as the 
unjust and unreasonable Italian demand for the 
cession to her of territories inhabited by Slavs. ''In- 
stead of coming into the war as the open friend of 
all oppressed Habsburg peoples, Italy allowed it to 
appear that for some of them her victory would 
mean not freedom but merely a change of masters ; 
and that others who might escape her rule — a rule 
as alien to them as that of Austria — would find her 
opposed to a realization of their national ideal of 
independence and union with their kith and kin. 
Every attack in the Italian press upon the Southern 
Slavs, every allusion to 'the Croats, the Cossacks of 
Austria,' every denunciation of Southern Slav exiles 
as 'the paid agents of Austria,' has, under skilful 
Austrian manipulation, reacted to the military dis- 
advantage of Italy. ' ' 1 These ambitions mean a 
more desperate Austrian resistance, a longer war, 
and as a consequence greater sacrifices from Amer- 
ica and the Allies. But on what principle can Italy 
appeal to us to make sacrifices for her imperialism? 
How can she demand from us an ungrudging gen- 
erosity to further her own sacred egoism? 

There are men in Italy of exactly the same opinion. 
The opposition to imperialism, strong in 1915, still 
exists. It has even been increased by the events of 

i The Veio Europe, Vol. IV, July 19, 1917. 



136 THE END OF THE WAR 

the war. There have been no great victories and 
there have been disastrous defeats. The economic 
conditions are bad. Food is dear and coal scarce, 
while the small success of the domestic war loans 
reveals a disquieting lack of confidence. Imperial- 
ism is on trial, as in Germany. Indeed the situation 
of the government is similar to that of the German 
government, and in either country a complete vic- 
tory might prove a menace to a healthy democratic 
development. To save itself the Government must 
win. Otherwise it goes down in disgrace, and even 
the Monarchy might not survive. The government 
is therefore desperate. It opposes any Anglo- 
French leaning towards a Greater Serbia, which 
would lessen Italy's gains; it attacks any co-opera- 
tion with Greece which would give that country lands 
that Italy covets; it protests; it threatens. It has 
chosen the imperialistic path and dares not wander 
from that path. It fears to disappoint the ardent 
hopes it has itself evoked. 

The American people, like all other nations, owe 
infinitely much to Italy, to her art, her literature, her 
culture, to the hardiness of her adventurers, from 
the days of Columbus to the day before yesterday 
when millions of Italians came to build our railroads, 
work our mines, and enter and enrich our civiliza- 
tion. We have only admiration and affection for 
the Italian people, so lately emerged from foreign 
subjection and political oppression. We sympathize 



SACRED EGOISM 137 

with Italy's heroic effort to achieve her independ- 
ence, to educate her people and take her true place 
among the civilizing peoples. But Italy's imperial- 
ism is nothing to us. We do not desire her do- 
minion of the Adriatic or of the Mediterranean. 1 
We could not if we wished revive the dominion of 
Venice which ended when the Byzantine Empire was 
destroyed and America discovered. The Republic of 
Venice is dead, and the Italians of the Twentieth 
Century have quite other tasks than to resurrect it, 
and should have other preoccupations. 

Italy is a case in point. Italian imperialism is 
much less menacing than is that of Germany, but it 
is also a menace, and spiritually of the same quality. 
It is one of the things to which we are, or should be, 
opposed. To fight for Italian imperialism, or for 
Russian, French, British or American imperialism, 
is to fight against internationalism. To fight in 
order that Italy may obtain Dalmatia and Asia 
Minor, to rule over Slavs and Austrians, to main- 
her imperium by means of the sword is no way in 
which to make the world safe for democracy. 

Italy has sought to bargain away her future secur- 

i It must be admitted, however, that to Italy a domination of the 
Adriatic by any foreign power would be a menace in exactly the 
same manner (and to an even great extent) as the control of the 
Caribbean by Germany would be a menace to the United States. 
But a domination by Italy of the Adriatic would be equally intoler- 
able to her neighbours. Until some international system can be 
created that will adequately protect the interests of all adjacent 
nations no solution of the Adriatic problem is at all possible. 



138 THE END OF THE WAR 

ity for an imperialistic mess, which she cannot hope 
to digest. It would be better for her and better for 
the world if she returned to her sanity, if she sur- 
rendered her extreme pretensions and made a renun- 
ciation, while there is still virtue in it. The true 
interest of Italy, as of other states, lies in an interna- 
tionalism which will safeguard her and us and all 
nations, and not in an imperialism, doomed to ex- 
haust her strength and destroy her idealism and to 
end in wars in which her feebleness will fare hard in 
a life and death contest with stronger powers. The 
earthen pot has no place among these crushing iron 
vessels. 



CHAPTER VII 

AMERICA AS AEBITEB 

In one of the ablest books that have appeared 
during the war the English internationalist, Mr. 
Henry Noel Brailsf ord, speaks as follows concerning 
the entrance of the United States into the world 
conflict : * ' It may be said that America is no longer 
the impartial and uncommitted Power, which might, 
by its balancing weight, render a League of Nations 
workable during the first difficult years. The loss 
is only apparent, for the neutrality of America was 
always differential. On the other hand, though her 
view on the broad issues of the war is decided and 
clear, she is not, nor will she become, an interested 
partisan, enmeshed in the territorial questions and 
the military issues of the European Balance of 
Power. Her influence as a moderating force re- 
mains uncompromised." 1 

Since Mr. Brailsford wrote his book, President 
Wilson has taken several long steps towards acting 
as moderator or arbitrator between the more ad- 
vanced claims of our Allies and our enemies. From 
the beginning America refrained from entering a 
formal alliance with our co-belligerents. We were 

1 'The League of Nations," by Henry Noel Brailsford, London, 
1917, p. vi. 

139 



140 THE END OF THE WAR 

willing to concert our military efforts and to adjust 
the distribution of our capital, food and military 
supplies, but we refused to tie our hands by agree- 
ments already made with regard to the individual 
ambitions of these Powers. We retained our liberty 
of action. Furthermore, in his Reply to the Pope 
Mr. Wilson differentiated our American war pur- 
poses from those of other enemies of Germany. He 
declared himself against "political or economic re- 
strictions meant to benefit some nations and cripple 
or embarrass others." He opposed " vindictive ac- 
tion of any sort or any kind of revenge or deliberate 
injury," as well as any "reprisal upon the German 
people." He set his face against "punitive dam- 
ages, the dismemberment of empires, the establish- 
ment of selfish and exclusive leagues." Speaking 
for the United States, Mr. Wilson agreed to enter 
into peace negotiations upon generous terms with 
a democratized and responsible German govern- 
ment. 

The Reply to the Pope was only the beginning 
of this form of negotiation between the United States 
and Germany and between the United States and her 
co-belligerents. In a series of messages the Presi- 
dent, despite a few regressions, moved towards an 
outlining in concrete terms of a moderate and liberal 
peace, not based upon conquest or even upon the 
assertion of military superiority, but upon a state of 
Europe and the world, in which internationalism 



AMERICA AS ARBITER 141 

and progress towards democracy would be possible. 
Finally on January 8th, 1918, he outlined the Amer- 
ican demands in terms more definite and language 
more explicit than had yet been used by any re- 
sponsible head of a government. These terms pro- 
vided for open diplomacy, the freedom of the seas, 
the establishment of trade equality, the reduction of 
armaments, the adjustment of colonial claims with 
regard to the wishes of the inhabitants, the indem- 
nification of Belgium, a league of nations to enforce 
specific agreements, autonomy for oppressed nation- 
alities, as well as changes in national frontiers along 
approximately nationalistic lines. It is true that 
this public statement of President Wilson, like all 
statements of terms, retains a certain nimbus of 
ambiguity, and has been variously interpreted. But 
no one can escape its conciliatory spirit. A truly 
democratic Germany might find these terms accept- 
able or unacceptable, but could not discern in them 
any desire to crush or humiliate. The note is a test 
of the repeated protestations of pacific intent of the 
Imperial German Government. 1 

To what extent we have as yet advanced in the sev- 
eral countries tow T ard a composition of differences 
it is difficult to determine. What informal and un- 
official negotiations or interrogatories, if any, are in 
progress we cannot pretend to know. The casual 

1 See also President Wilson's February note, outlining the four 
principles of settlement. 



142 THE END OF THE WAR 

colloquies between unacknowledged representatives 
of the belligerent powers are not made public and 
we never see the successive steps but only the end. 
Xor is a real advance towards a mutual understand- 
ing always recognized as such, for every statement 
issued by each belligerent is capable of a wide range 
of possible interpretation and a promise is often 
couched in the form of a threat. 

It is a rarefied atmosphere in which we here move 
and one in which it is difficult to measure progress 
or note direction. Yet the essential fact remains 
that one nation, the United States, preserves its lib- 
erty of negotiation. By this it is not meant that we 
alone have been the moderators of this war. A far 
stronger impulse to a liberalization of the war came 
from Russia, and a statement, quite as clear as any 
that we have made, and equally liberal in spirit, is- 
sued from the British Labour Party. But there is 
a vast distinction between a Labour Party, however 
powerful, and the government of a sovereign nation 
of one hundred millions, and there is an equally wide 
gulf between the Russian influence, as it was exerted 
in January, 1918, and that of the United States. To 
a considerable degree Russia's influence, like ours 
before we entered the war, was moral, her military 
weakness robbing her decisions of all physical sanc- 
tion. On the other hand, America has both a moral 
and a physical influence, the latter being enforced by 
economic and military weapons. The nation is un- 



AMERICA AS ARBITER 143 

bound, disinterested, powerful, and free to deal dip- 
lomatically with both sides. 1 

Had it been Japan, Roumania or Italy which had 
preserved such an independence, the influence upon a 
future peace would have been less potent and less 
salutary. None of these nations can effect a de- 
cision in this war, which would go on despite their 
defection. 2 Moreover, none of these Powers would 
have used its freedom to seek a permanent and 
universal peace. America is in different case. She 
can exert a powerful influence upon the whole course 
of peace negotiations because of her unexcelled 
strategic position. 

That position results from several factors, the 
greatest of which is our relative security. Of all 
belligerents we are the most immune from serious 
German attack, since Germany cannot assail us 
except after the overthrow of the other Powers. 
In that sense, though not intentionally, the Allies, 

iAs this book goes to press (March 9, 1918) the strategic posi- 
tion in the war held by the United States from April to October, 
1917 (and, in some sense, even up to the beginning of February, 
1918), has been temporarily, and, perhaps, permanently destroyed. 
So long as Russia remained an ally, America occupied a middle 
ground. She could act with democratic Russia and use the joint 
influence of the two nations to compel a re-statement of Allied peace 
terms and a liberalization of the war. She could appeal to demo- 
cratic sentiment both in Allied and in enemy lands. With the loss of 
Russia and, as a consequence of Roumania, the German government 
is strengthened, the German liberal sentiment is weakened, and the 
former advantageous position of the United States is lost. America 
is far less able to make up for a possible new defection of an ally 
than she was during the period in which Russia was in the war. 

2 See note above. 



144 THE END OF THE WAR 

before the period of our neutrality, were fighting 
our battle. Nor do we enter into German animosi- 
ties and plans of conquest to the same degree or with 
the same immediacy as do England, France and Rus- 
sia. We still preserve a remnant of our former phy- 
sical and moral isolation. 

Moreover, America is the least exhausted of the 
belligerent nations. Having just begun to fight, our 
military strength is on a sharply ascending curve. 
With our surplus food, war materials and money, 
we are more indispensable to our Allies than they 
to us. We could better survive a drawn battle or 
even a German victory than could France, Great 
Britain or Italy. 

Finally, our strategic position is enhanced by our 
having no obvious, direct, material interest in the 
war. We have the freedom of wanting nothing. 
Undoubtedly certain individuals and groups in 
America do profit by the conflict, but as affecting 
the nation's present determination to fight, these 
profits are incidental and are largely to be diverted 
to meet war expenses. Our true interests in the 
war are broader and less tangible than those im- 
puted. We have in internationalism and peace a 
valuable, substantial and permanent interest, and 
we cannot afford to have that interest destroyed by 
a militaristic Germany. But we have no ax to 
grind, no special national interest to subserve as 
opposed to the common interest. We are therefore 



AMERICA AS ARBITER 145 

in a better position to represent and pursue that 
common interest. 

It follows that our American policy should be so 
to moderate and transform the war aims of our 
Allies, so to revise the terms upon which they will 
cease from fighting that we may win over the demo- 
cratic elements in Germany and thus aid them to 
overcome their militarist groups. Upon a peace so 
obtained we may lay the foundations of a new inter- 
national order. We are seeking the higher path for 
the nations by attempting to block the lower paths. 

But we can accomplish this, as our past efforts 
have shown, only against the will not only of our 
enemies but of influential groups among our Allies. 

In every alliance, as in each individual nation, we 
discover a conflict of aims. In England there are 
democrats and internationalists on one side and im- 
perialists on the other, and France, Italy, Russia, 
the United States, as well as Germany and Austria, 
reveal similar cleavages. Within every country the 
relative strength of the two groups varies. In 
Japan, for example, the preponderance of power lies 
in the hands of men who seek purely nationalistic 
aims, whereas in America the weight of influence lies 
with the opposite group. The main cleavage in the 
struggle for internationalism and democracy is not 
between nations. Men find their natural allies 
among the populations against whom they fight. 

A war policy, inspired by internationalism, there- 



146 THE END OF THE WAR 

fore, should seek to enlist behind its program all 
the progressive forces on both sides of the fighting 
line. 

It will doubtless be urged against such a policy 
that it is impossible within the frame-work of an 
alliance. It will be urged that our concert with our 
co-belligerents, the very instrument by which we are 
to accomplish our purpose, will be destroyed if we 
in America insist upon plans antagonistic to those 
of our Allies. Without unity of conception and pur- 
pose among its members no coalition can endure. 
Thus in 1914 the union between Austria and Italy 
broke down utterly because in a matter vital to both 
the two allies were fundamentally opposed. There- 
fore caution must be exercised in every league, all 
useless recriminations avoided, and even fair criti- 
cism on points not essential minimized. If Allies 
are to pull together, good nature, generosity, a will- 
ingness to forego minor rights and unimportant 
precedences, a greater readiness to praise than 
blame, are indispensable. Each ally must be ex- 
pected to "swallow" a good deal. 

This very care, however, with which we must re- 
spect the rights and susceptibilities of our Allies 
reveals more than do the terms of any treaty the real 
nature and essential weakness of the bonds that 
unite. An alliance is a compromise. It is a union 
of nations with diverse and even opposed interests on 
the assumption that larger interests will be con- 



AMERICA AS ARBITER 147 

served or gained by the union than will be lost. The 
more accurately these rival interests are adjusted the 
more effective the alliance. 

Almost every coalition, however, develops a tend- 
ency towards internal strain and fissure. Though 
in the First Balkan War Greece, Bulgaria and Serbia 
were able to agree upon a common policy; the real 
opposition of their ambitions was tragically revealed 
in the Second Balkan War. Today a similar conflict 
of interest lies hidden in both alliances. Bulgaria 
and Austria have interests not identical with those 
of Germany. France has no interest in Italian 
claims in Dalmatia, and Serbia is bitterly opposed 
to them. Russia and Roumania have found it diffi- 
cult to agree. None of the Allies is over-anxious to 
keep Japan in Shantung. The whole alliance is an 
unstable equilibrium, maintained only by fear of a 
formidable enemy. 

When we reflect that almost every coalition is 
thus a log-rolling arrangement, insecure in direct 
proportion to its freedom from outside pressure, we 
are forced to recognize that any reform in an entente 
can be secured only at the cost of internal fric- 
tion. The cost and danger of this friction must be 
set against the value of the object sought. We have 
no right to jeopardize harmony for any trivial gain. 
We must not use our freedom of action to injure 
our co-belligerents, to aid the enemy, to disrupt the 
Alliance. In honour and decency we are bound not 



148 THE END OF THE WAR 

to make sudden and unheralded decisions, but must 
enforce our policy with forewarning and tact. On 
the other hand, we dare not surrender the real pur- 
poses for which we entered the war in order to 
maintain the adhesion of nations and groups op- 
posed to those purposes. 

What, then, concretely, is the method which 
America should pursue? How are we to further 
clear up the issues ? How remove or lessen the war's 
aggressive, imperialistic features and make the con- 
flict in fact a war for democracy, internationalism 
and peace? 

Our first great opportunity to secure an assimila- 
tion of the aims of our Allies to our own principles 
arose before we declared war. If in March, 1917, we 
had made our entrance into the struggle upon the 
side of the Allies contingent upon their agreeing with 
us upon a set of war aims, which would really lead to 
a peace based upon internationalism, we should have 
been in a far better position to carry our point than 
we have been at any subsequent time. The Allies 
needed our aid far more than we ourselves knew, and 
doubtless they would have been willing to make terms 
with us as they made terms (of quite a different 
character) with Italy and Roumania. Until they 
agreed to our conditions, at least in principle, we 
might have armed and prepared for war without any 
actual declaration. Entering the war on these terms 
we should have been able to prove to Russia that the 



AMERICA AS ARBITER 149 

Alliance was not imperialistic and to German demo- 
crats that the Alliance had no intention of crushing 
Germany. The Allies might well have granted to 
us as the price of our adhesion what they were un- 
willing to concede once we had declared war without 
conditions. 

Having missed this opportunity we cannot do bet- 
ter than to continue in the path we have already 
chosen of defining our own national policy in detail 
and seeking to win over our co-belligerents to the 
same general program. 

We may do this in several ways. A convention 
of the Allied Powers may be called to revise war 
aims, or there may be an exchange of notes with 
those Powers for the elimination of extreme de- 
mands. Finally we may publicly set forth our own 
policy towards the war, a precise, emphatic and un- 
ambiguous statement of the things for which Amer- 
ica will fight and of the things for which she will 
not fight, leaving perhaps certain matters to future 
negotiation. 

The first and second plans are more desirable than 
the third, since they constitute an action within the 
cadre of the Alliance. The third should not be tried 
if it can be avoided. The more our policy is one 
of persuasion and not of coercion the better. 

Is any coercion, resulting from a limitation of 
our war aims, moral? And can we carry out such 
a program? Will the mere attempt split up the 



150 THE END OF THE WAR 

Alliance, assure a German victory, and defeat the 
purposes for which we entered the war! 

Not only is such a policy not immoral, but no 
other policy is moral. Though the Allies may use 
our armies and navy and draw upon our food, muni- 
tions and credit, they may not control our funda- 
mental purposes. It would be unworthy of us not 
to take our full share in the struggle, to fight with 
one hand, to save our own men and let our Allies 
be killed in their stead. It would be immoral, as 
well as unwise, to escape our burden or postpone our 
assistance. But we are neither obliged to fight, nor 
justified in fighting, for things to which we are 
actually opposed. Nor is such refusal a disadvan- 
tage to our Allies ; in the long run it is in their own 
interest. Peace and security are better for them 
than an increase of territory or payments of money. 

Whether such a policy is in itself dangerous to 
the Alliance and to our own purposes is a question 
requiring consideration. Clearly tact, caution and 
candour are necessary, since any mistake would be 
exploited by a resourceful enemy. Time and oc- 
casion are of the essence of the problem. Much 
depends upon the forces in control of the Central 
Alliance and also upon the internal Balance of 
Power within our own group. Had the Allies in 
January, 1917, declared that they would not insist 
upon Russian conquests in the Turkish Empire, the 
Czar might have concluded a separate peace. At 



AMERICA AS ARBITER 151 

that time, when the Entente could be maintained 
only by the assistance of land-hungry Powers, and 
a triumphant and unregenerate Germany was striv- 
ing to disintegrate the alliance against her, any 
revision of terms likely to disappoint any ally might 
have spelled disruption and defeat. Because it was 
inopportune, President Wilson's December request 
that the Allies state their terms resulted in only an 
exaggeration of their demands. But after the Rus- 
sian Revolution the situation changed. The New 
Russia was opposed to conquest, and the adhesion of 
America to the Alliance tended to make the defection 
of one or more of the smaller powers less dangerous. 

The conditions for an explicit and detailed state- 
ment of liberal terms, not only by the United States 
but by all the Allies jointly, are already present. In 
the first place, the desire for peace seems to be grow- 
ing in Germany, and is especially insistent in 
Austria. The Revolution in Russia has introduced 
a new factor making for internationalism, and Amer- 
ica 's entry into the war contributes to the same re- 
sult. We are today in a position to urge upon the 
world a peace of internationalism. The Alliance 
will bear the strain. 1 

For the morality of any alliance is that of the 
least moral (or most necessitous) nation essential 
to the alliance and capable of deserting. If today 
Japan could safely and profitably withdraw, and 

i See, however, note on page 143. 



152 THE END OF THE WAR 

leave her Allies to the certainty of defeat, it might 
be incumbent upon them to make all possible con- 
cessions to her to prevent this catastrophe. If, how- 
ever, as a result of changed conditions, Japan were 
no longer indispensable, if she were unable to cause 
the Allies greater damage by withdrawal than she 
caused herself, her bargaining power would be less. 
The importance of this point cannot be over-empha- 
sized; the effective resistance of any one ally to a 
policy which threatens to deprive it of anticipated 
war gains is measured exactly by that nation's nui- 
sance value, by the amount of injury it can safely 
inflict by defection or by an actual union with an 
enemy bent on conquest. In other words, each na- 
tion relies upon its irreplaceability to extort the sort 
of peace it desires. 

It will be urged that it also relies upon solemn 
agreements entered into by the Allies among them- 
selves. Italy and Roumania have sacrificed much; 
can England and France treat their promises to 
these Allies as "scraps of paper"? But if the 
United States, which was not a party, refuses to fight 
for the fulfilment of those secret engagements, and 
if without her assistance England and France cannot 
bring about conditions under which the promises can 
be redeemed, what is to be done? They are offers, 
like Germany's offer of Arizona to Mexico, worthless 
unless fulfilled. Assuming that Germany does not 
suddenly collapse, Italy can hardly hope to gain all 



AMERICA AS ARBITER 153 

that has been promised her without America's aid. 
We will not accept this burden. We are more likely 
to end the war when the international purposes for 
which we entered it are achieved. As far as we are 
concerned, the general nature of the peace we desire 
has been outlined by Mr. Wilson in his January 
and February (1918) notes. Whether in the near 
future we can impose these general principles upon 
the Allies will depend, first, upon Germany's atti- 
tude, and, secondly, upon the nuisance value of vari- 
ous imperialistic groups controlling national policies 
within the Alliance itself. Which of these Allies, by 
making peace with Germany, or even aiding that na- 
tion, can prohibit the adoption of such a program? 

Clearly Great Britain cannot make a separate 
peace, and would not if she could. A victory for 
Germany would mean for her a partial eclipse. 
France cannot make a separate treaty more valuable 
to her than the peace that we seek. Belgium has 
nothing with which to make terms, and in any case 
would gain all that she wants from a peace for which 
America is willing to fight. Serbia, Montenegro and 
Portugal are negligible, as far as discretion in peace 
making goes. Democratic Russia may make a sep- 
arate peace, but not because of any refusal on our 
part to fight for imperialistic aims. There remain 
Italy and Japan. It is possible that Italian im- 
perialists are already reconciling themselves to a 
limitation of nationalistic aims (with which Italian 



154 THE END OF THE WAR 

democrats have never been in sympathy), and even 
if an imperialistic government were tempted to make 
a separate peace rather than surrender promised 
territories, it would hesitate. By ceasing hostilities 
Italy would release hundreds of thousands of Aus- 
trian troops. But in the long run she would lose. 
Better for her to gain little from an Allied victory 
than eventually to lose all, since if Germany wins 
Italy becomes little better than a vassal state. 1 

The situation of Japan is anomalous. The Island 
Empire has been taught imperialism in the bitter and 
unscrupulous conflict of Europe in the Far East, and 
she has learned not to be too magnanimous. Her 
own necessities and the aggressions of the European 
nations have forced her also to be aggressive. She 
hurriedly entered the war for very concrete national 
purposes, and in the apparent belief that the contest 
would be short and that the Central Empires would 
soon collapse. When Germany proved stronger than 

i As yet (March 9, 1918) no revision of the Italian treaty has 
been made. "Lord R. Cecil, speaking on the subject of secret 
treaties, contended that they were thoroughly justifiable in the 
circumstances, and that so long as they exist we are bound by them. 
It seemed to him, when asked to repudiate them, that the pacifists 
did not understand the elements of their own creed, for how should 
we make any progress in international affairs unless we regarded 
such obligations as sacred? (Cheers.) These treaties were entered 
into for obvious reasons. ("Annexation.") Not at all; they were 
undertaken as part of the war measures of this country. He knew 
how much these treaties lent themselves to misrepresentation, and 
that they were not popular, but a Government which for that reason 
would not do what they thought right was unfit to hold office." 
Manchester Guardian, February 14, 1918. 



AMERICA AS ARBITER 155 

had been expected, Japan hesitated. She remained 
technically an ally but morally she became an in- 
terested neutral. Today, having no international 
purposes to serve in the war, her interest would 
seem to lie in a long and indecisive conflict, in a 
permanent balancing of opposed European forces, 
which would give her a free hand in Asia. Condi- 
tions determine her policy. Fortunately for the Al- 
lies, however, Japan's power depends upon her com- 
merce and navy, and the vast preponderance of naval 
power lies with the enemies of Germany. Japan, 
even though she wished to do so, and that itself is ex- 
tremely doubtful, would hesitate to change sides, 
whatever the provocation, so long as Russia held and 
the Allies maintained control of the sea and of the 
world's markets. Though a disappointed Japan 
might damage the Allies, it would be only at an 
excessive cost to herself. She can gain more from 
the grudging generosity of the sea powers than from 
any promise of eventual benefit from the enemy. 
Even if her defection threw the war to Germany, 
she herself would suffer too much from the hostility 
of nearer neighbours to render such a venture wise. 1 

i Today (March 9, 1918) this situation has largely cnanged be- 
cause Russia has not "held." Japan's strategic position, weakened 
by America's entrance into the war, has been enormously strength- 
ened by the dissolution of Russia. As a consequence we find Japan 
proposing an invasion of Siberia, and England, France and Italy 
vociferously applauding. Whether the assent of these Powers to 
Japan's proposal resulted from fear we are in no position to state. 
It seems probable, however, that only dire necessity reconciled the 



156 THE END OF THE WAR 

Thus the situation so shapes itself as to open up 
the possibility of America's further carrying out a 
policy of destroying the imperialistic character of 
the war and of converting it into a real war for 
democracy and internationalism. 

West-European Powers to this proposed invasion of Siberia, which 
is likely to alienate Russia, deflect Japanese shipping from the inter- 
national trade and, perhaps, in the end, to lead to a community of 
interests between Japan and Germany. 






CHAPTER VIII 

THE TRUE ALIGNMENT 

"In the peace to be concluded we demand an inter- 
national arrangement for general disarmament, as 
being the chief means of strengthening the debili- 
tated states. General disarmament is the only way 
to break any militarist supremacy and to secure a 
lasting and peaceful understanding between the na- 
tions. 

' ' We demand the fullest freedom for international 
trade and intercourse, as well as an unlimited right 
of migration. We condemn any economic barriers 
or any economic struggle between states. 

"All disputes between states must be settled by 
compulsory international arbitration. 

' ' Equal rights should be granted for all the inhab- 
itants of any country without regard to tongue, race 
or religion. This would also mean the securing to 
national minorities the right to develop their national 
life. 

"With all firmness we object to the violation in 
any form of any nation. 

"The re-establishment of Serbia as a self-govern- 
ing, independent state is our absolute demand. 

"We understand the deep feeling of the Poles 

157 



158 THE END OF THE WAR 

for national unity. To admit the right of Russian 
Poland to national independence but to deny that 
same right to Prussian and Austrian Poland is con- 
tradictory. 

' ' The full independence and economic self-depend- 
ence (i. e., freedom from economic interference) of 
Belgium is inevitable. In fulfilment of the German 
government's promise at the beginning of the war, 
the Belgian nation has to be compensated for the 
damage caused by the war, and especially for the 
economic values that have been taken way. Such a 
repayment has nothing to do with the various kinds 
of indemnities, which simply mean the plundering 
of the vanquished by the victor, and which we there- 
fore reject." * 

The memorandum from which the above is quoted 
is not a British, French, Russian or American mani- 
festo, but was written and endorsed by Germans. 
It is the deliberate statement of principles and aims 
by the German Minority Socialists, and it represents 
the views of hundreds of thousands of workers in 

i Extract from the Memorandum of the German Minority Social- 
ists in reply to the questionnaire of the Dutch-Scandinavian Com- 
mittee. This memorandum, which was not allowed to be circulated 
in Germany, can be read in full ( in English ) in the New York 
Tribune, Aug. 12, 1917. See also the Statement of the Austrian So- 
cialist Delegates, as well as the Statement of the Hungarian Socialist 
Delegates (to the Dutch-Scandinavian Socialist Committee), trans- 
lated from the Holland News, Review of the N ederlandsche Anti- 
Oorlag Raad (June 20. 1917) and published in Approaches to the 
Great Settlement by Professor Emily Balch, New York, 1918, pp. 
186 to 193 conclusive. Through the courtesy of Professor Balch the 
present author was permitted to read her book in proof. 



THE TRUE ALIGNMENT 159 

Leipzig and Chemnitz, in Berlin and Jena and in 
all the great industrial centres of the Empire. De- 
manding that Belgium be evacuated and indemnified, 
that Prussian Poland be turned over to an inde- 
pendent Polish Commonwealth, that Germany (as 
well as her allies and enemies) refrain from making 
conquests and exacting indemnities, insisting, finally, 
on the establishment of a democratic international 
system, this memorandum stands on a complete 
parity with the declarations of the most liberal and 
progressive elements in the Allied nations. Between 
the Junkers and the German Minority Socialists 
there is as wide a gulf as between any two groups in 
Europe. They are both German, but are at opposite 
poles. 

We are likely to ignore the obvious fact that not 
all Germans are alike, that a nation is a very com- 
posite and heterogeneous thing, a vast agglomera- 
tion of unlike and even antagonistic groups. 

In war times especially we tend to think of a nation 
as a unit for the reason that it fights as a unit. A 
new solidarity springs up. Rich man, poor man, 
beggar-man, thief; philanthropist and pickpocket, 
society lady and kitchen maid, banker and janitor, 
seem to be fused by compulsion, conviction and mob 
psychology. The nation becomes a regimented thing 
and the most unlike citizens are apparently reduced 
to a common denominator. It is a Procrustean 
process by which those who stand too high above 



160 THE END OF THE WAR 

the crowd have their feet or heads cut off and those 
who are too small for the general patriotic sentiment 
are painfully stretched. By one means or another, 
however, the society achieves, if not an intellectual 
uniformity, at least a unanimity of response to a 
few simple appeals. 

In countries with astute and powerful autocracies 
this process of intellectual regimentation usually 
takes place more completely than in democratic 
countries. The pacifist, the conscientious objector 
and the protestants of all sorts disappear beneath 
the surface of the national consciousness. Rapidly 
the nation becomes intolerant and united. This 
more rapid cohesion of divergent groups constitutes 
a great advantage for a nation like Germany, and, 
parenthetically, a corresponding menace to neigh- 
bouring democracies. For the true progress of 
democracy depends upon the maintenance of an 
intellectual independence among its groups, and this 
becomes an obstacle to the instantaneous mobiliza- 
tion of public opinion, to that concentration and in- 
tensification of the general mind, which accompanies 
every great war, just or unjust. If the democratic 
nations are to live within the constant menace of 
sudden war, they must either adapt themselves to 
the German system or prevent Germany from main- 
taining conditions which permit so instantaneous a 
mobilization. 

Yet in all countries, democratic and autocratic, we 



THE TRUE ALIGNMENT 161 

find dissent, and, as the German Minority Socialist 
memorandum and many other facts prove, the regi- 
mentation of thought turns out to be in part a sup- 
pression rather than a destruction of differences. 
Latent, these differences reappear when a crucial 
issue is raised. On the question of repelling in- 
vaders, all Frenchmen stand united, but on whether 
France should fight for an indemnity, or even to 
reconquer Alsace-Lorraine, divergences appear. 
The same is true of the public opinion of Great 
Britain, Russia, Italy, the United States, Germany 
and Austria. All Germans are determined that their 
country shall not be crushed, but over the issue 
whether Germany should war for conquests there is 
the gravest conflict. 

The issue of internationalism versus militarism 
uncovers, therefore, a new cleavage, cutting athwart 
the alignment between the hostile nations. Upon 
this issue British Liberals and German Liberals 
stand closer together than do British Liberals and 
Conservatives or German Liberals and Conserva- 
tives. So long as the war remains a war for national 
security each nation is compacted and indivisible. 
As soon, however, as men fight for principles, those 
of one type, irrespective of nationality, range them- 
selves against those of another, for opinions, beliefs, 
and traditions are partly independent of frontiers. 

This fact influences the relations of American lib- 
erals to all the peoples at war. In actual fighting 



162 THE END OF THE WAR 

our Allies are certain nations with definite geo- 
graphical boundaries. These nations may be demo- 
cratic, semi-democratic or undemocratic. On the 
other hand, in our effort to achieve our ultimate 
purposes in the war, our Allies are found among the 
democratic elements in all countries. 

Not all the tories are in Germany. They abound 
and multiply in every country where conditions are 
favourable to their survival, and they are found in 
democratic nations as well as in those ruled by auto- 
crats. When, for example, in August, 1917, Presi- 
dent Wilson demanded democratization in Germany 
and promised a non-punitive peace, he proposed a 
general test of liberalism. Immediately the major- 
ity of German papers described his message as in- 
solent, stupid, ''grotesque nonsense," but the Social- 
journal Vorwdrts gave its immediate adhesion. It 
insisted that "it would be unworthy" of Germany 
"to refuse to give the guarantees demanded by Mr. 
Wilson." In other words, certain groups in Ger- 
many vaguely recognized that American democrats 
were fighting for principles by which they themselves 
had long been inspired. Similarly, a few isolated 
Hungarian journals praised the note, which also 
found wide favour with British and French liberal 
journals. On the other hand, certain Tory papers of 
London found this democratic message less to their 
taste. Said the Saturday Review: "No punitive 
damages, no dismemberment of empires, no eco- 



THE TRUE ALIGNMENT 163 

nomic boycott, these three negatives are an epitome 
of what the representative of the United States will 
say when peace comes to be seriously discussed. 
But these three negatives bar the war aims of Eng- 
land, France, and Italy, as up to date they have been 
formulated by their statesmen." x 

The issue is not yet clearly drawn, but as it be- 
comes sharper it will be obvious that although we 
are fighting Germany and aiding Great Britain, we 
are in our final policy in closer union with the Vor- 
wdrts of Berlin than with the Saturday Review of 
London. 

Our policy, therefore, aims at the ultimate union 
of all the democratic groups. Unfortunately these 
groups, upon which we must build in formulating 
a peace based upon internationalism, are not clearly 
defined. Men are not militarists or pacifists through 
and through, but in tens of millions of cases the same 
man is one or the other, according to changing con- 
ditions. The ordinary man who has boasted of his 
pacifism will fight on occasion, and if the fighting 
goes well may not even be averse to his country's 
gaining something from the war. On the other hand, 
in certain circumstances the militarists, the instinct- 
ive fighters and the whole little world of "bloody- 
minded Sir Lucius 'Triggers" are now and again 
anxious for peace. Millions of men swing from one 
attitude to the other. Still, certain economic and 

i Saturday Review, Vol. 124, September 8, 1917, p. 177. 



164 THE END OF THE WAR 

intellectual groups in each nation incline to a policy 
of conquest, imperialism and aggression, while other 
groups incline to one of internationalism and peace. 
What is needed for an international policy is the 
unification and crystallization of a mass of diverse 
elements in the various countries. 

The adhesion of many differing groups in coun- 
tries at war with each other, however, is not easy 
to compass. For a polic) 7 of conquest nothing is 
needed but the unity of a single nation, and this can 
be secured by a stirring appeal to tradition and 
patriotism. Each nation has long been taught to 
hold itself intellectually apart from other nations, 
and the war instinct is not only ancient and powerful, 
but is cultivated by strong class interests and is 
stimulated by a government, expressing the national 
unity and controlling the sources of information 
upon which public opinion is based. International 
jealousy, malice, misrepresentation, all of which 
flourish luxuriantly in wartime, work in favour of a 
policy of national aggression. On the other hand, 
a desire for internationalism, a new and weak desire 
at best, cannot become effective until it brings about 
a coalition of groups in hostile countries, groups 
which do not always understand each other, do not 
speak the same language and are not, in war time, 
permitted to come together to discuss issues or seek 
an international solidarity. 



THE TRUE ALIGNMENT 165 

Moreover, in very few countries are these groups 
given as full freedom of expression as are those 
which are frankly imperialistic. The German Gov- 
ernment suppresses the memorandum of the Minor- 
ity Socialists, censors liberal papers and incarcerates 
men like Liebknecht, while rabid annexationists are 
permitted the utmost freedom of speech. Nor have 
the Allied states always encouraged those of their 
citizens who seek to meet the enemy and by discus- 
sion to arrive at a common basis, whereas they have 
given full sway to those who threaten and endeavour 
to terrify the enemy. The Daily Mail and the Morn- 
ing Post of London have always been permitted to 
be sent abroad, although it is by quoting from jour- 
nals like these that German imperialists attempt to 
prove to their people that the Allies wish to crush 
them. On the other hand, liberal papers like The 
Nation (of London) are often considered too dan- 
gerous to export. "One might assume," remarks 
Mr. Norman Angell . . . "that the foreign circula- 
tion of this latter group — Socialist papers, or Liberal 
journals in favor of a moderate settlement — would 
be encouraged. In every case, however, it is these 
papers that the various Censorships prevent from 
going abroad, that they sometimes suppress at home 
and always discourage. It is the former group," 
(journals favouring a punitive and severe settle- 
ment with Germany), it is these journals that are 



166 THE END OF THE WAR 

"used by the enemy governments, that are immune 
from such prohibition or embarrassment." 1 

Perhaps we should not blame the poor censor too 
harshly. After all, he is only expressing the gen- 
eral intolerance and nervous irritability of the war 
temper. Like the common run of men, the censor, 
even though he be a mild-mannered man, cannot con- 
ceive of a nation at once energized for war and recep- 
tive to proposals of peace. To think of peace, to 
think even of the true objects of the war, seem to him 
relaxing and weakening. Let jingoes and imperial- 
ists, the men who love war or the profits of war, whip 
us into a frenzy, but let those who think in terms of 
ultimate reconciliation and world-reorganization be 
shamed and silenced. 

Fortunately, however, the mere instinctive fighting 
temper is mortal, and as this first mood passes 
serious men begin to reflect upon the war, and to en- 
visage it in a larger way than is at first possible. 
The sheer duration of the conflict makes for a re- 
vision of judgments. Thus it happens that powerful 
forces in all belligerent countries tend to create a 
union of like-minded groups disposed toward the 
attainment of a permanent international organiza- 
tion. One of these forces is war-weariness. To 
disgust with the slaughter, waste and brutal- 
ity of the war, there is added a sense of its 

i Norman Angell. Introduction to "Approaches to the Great Set- 
tlement," by Emily Greene Balch, New York, 1918, p. 7. 



THE TRUE ALIGNMENT 167 

futility, its essential indecisiveness, its moral 
ineffectiveness. The feeling is gaining ground, 
moreover, that whatever the war's immediate occa- 
sion, its ultimate cause — the outstanding fact which 
made it sooner or later inevitable — was the interna- 
tional anarchy in which the nations have so long 
lived. There is no desire among democrats to re- 
peat the ghastly struggle, to begin other wars when 
this war is ended. And such new conflicts must 
inevitably occur unless a real solution is found for 
our international problems. Not alone and not au- 
tomatically will the war bring internationalism and 
peace. "War can do many things," says Bernard 
Shaw, "but it cannot end war." Only a peace, in- 
formed by a spirit of internationalism, can lead to 
this result. If we leave the making and keeping of 
peace to the ultra-nationalists we shall have had the 
war for our pains. 

When we look about the world for the allies of 
internationalism, therefore, we find them in the 
democratic, liberal and socialistic groups of all 
nations. These groups desire a fair peace, though 
they differ as to what the words mean. In prin- 
ciple and from interest these groups are opposed 
to the militaristic classes in their own nations. They 
are interested in economic development, social bet- 
terment, progress through free international inter- 
course, and are of necessity opposed to a destruction 
of their industrial and social life by war, though 



168 THE END OF THE WAR 

they are not opposed to every war. Politically they 
are the enemies of those exploitative groups which 
maintain power by an appeal to the war spirit and 
to international jealousy. The democratic classes 
were forced into the present war through the break- 
down of the old industrial system under which they 
lived. That system was excessively nationalistic, 
was based on an economic competition between 
nations, which inevitably led to war. So long as 
there existed a cut-throat competition in trade and 
armaments, each group of producers, however nat- 
urally pacific, was pushed towards war. But even 
while going to war all these groups vaguely appre- 
hended the possibility of a better system, in which 
industry could develop, nations expand and democ- 
racy live without incessant conflict. 

The intellectual chasm between these groups of 
democrats and the opposed groups of militarists and 
reactionaries is wide and deep. "The difference be- 
tween those who believe and those who disbelieve in 
the Stockholm idea," says a writer in the (London) 
Nation Supplement of October, 1917, "is so tre- 
mendous that one fears to appear exaggerated and 
hysterical by stating it. If one begins by saying that 
it is the difference between 'open diplomacy' and 
'secret diplomacy' one has only touched the fringe 
of the truth; it is the difference between a secret 
peace, between an armed peace and a people's peace, 
between the dry bones of the eighteenth century and 



THE TEUE ALIGNMENT 169 

the fresh hopes of a new generation, between 'The 
Prince ' of Machiavelli and the Sermon on the Mount. 
There are, in fact, two irreconcilable worlds — the 
world of Willy and Nicky, of the Congress of Vienna, 
the Congress of Paris, the Congress of Berlin, the 
Triple Alliance, the Dual Alliance, the Triple En- 
tente, the Congress of Algeciras, and the world still 
struggling to be born in the Conference which never 
met at Stockholm. Sweep away all the deadwood 
of political phrases, and you find that the two worlds 
are based on two irreconcilable ideals — the ideal of 
international competition and the ideal of interna- 
tional co-operation. Therefore, the question as to 
which ideal and which world will issue victorious out 
of the war depends simply on the question what it is 
that we believe and what it is that we want. ' ' ! 

In Germany we find this cleavage between the 
groups extremely sharp. On the one hand we have 
the left wing of the socialists who desire a peace 
without annexations or indemnities and are striv- 
ing to attain an international organization. On the 
other hand, in no other country have we so strong 
and violent a group of expansionists and imperial- 
ists. Between these extremes we find the Majority 
Socialists, the Radicals and Liberals and a large 
section of the Catholics, all of which groups united 
in the adoption of the Reichstag declaration of July 
19, 1917. In Austria and even in Hungary, as also 

i "War and Peace," The Nation Supplement, October, 1917. 



170 THE END OF THE WAR 

in France, Italy, England and America, we find the 
same general cleavage. 

In this alignment we often find men of different 
social classes united and men of the same social 
class disunited. Of two brothers, both carpenters 
or peasants, one may be an imperialist and the other 
an internationalist. Upon the whole, however, the 
centre and core of the democratic international 
movement in each country lies in the labour group. 

During the last forty years these labour groups 
have developed a strong interest in international- 
ism, due in part to economic conditions. Long be- 
fore Karl Marx urged proletarians of all lands to 
unite, and ever since, the wage-earners of each coun- 
try, recognizing their similarity of position with 
wage-earners in other lands, have developed a cer- 
tain degree of international consciousness. They 
have discovered that the workers in one land 
are affected favourably or unfavourably by the same 
circumstances that affect their fellows in foreign 
lands. A rise of wages in Germany accrues in- 
directly to the benefit of the British workman, and 
vice versa, and many have been the attempts made 
to secure a co-operation between British, French 
and German workmen, in the matter of wages, hours 
of labour, factory protection, social legislation and 
other conditions. There has steadily grown up an 
international labour legislation which has had the 
indirect effect of increasing the number of those 



THE TRUE ALIGNMENT 171 

wage-earners in various countries who perceived that 
they had interests in common. It is, of course, not 
to be denied that the wage-earners of one nation 
may benefit at the expense of those of another, as 
when by means of a protective tariff a given industry 
is destroyed in Austria or Switzerland and is re- 
established in the United States. On the whole, 
however, the wage-earners have more to gain and 
less to lose from international peace than have their 
employers. As a consequence we find in the labour 
programs of all nations this common ideal of the 
internationalism of the workers. This is especially 
true in the socialist movement where, although in 
recent years there has been a recrudescence of 
labour nationalism, the international spirit still 
holds sway. 

One of the firmest hopes of a democratic peace, 
therefore, and of the laying of a solid foundation 
for internationalism, lies in an increasing influence 
of the labour element in all countries upon the course 
of the war. The war has moved in this direction. 
True, like other conflicts, this war has also led to an 
initial restriction of individual rights, especially of 
wage-earners. The trade unions were obliged to 
surrender many of their old restrictions and privi- 
leges and the principle of conscription was applied 
to a considerable extent to industrial life. But for 
even these developments there have been offsets. 
The surrender of trade union privileges has tended 



172 THE END OF THE WAR 

to break down barriers witliin the labour ranks and 
thus to unite workers, and the common pressure laid 
upon all wage-earners by conscription not only in- 
creased their solidarity, but also educated them in 
the facts of the war. The wage-earners are willing 
to accept sacrifices so long as they believe that they 
are fighting for a principle. But they will not make 
them for the sake of conquests or indemnities. They 
will not sell their lives or their liberties for money or 
national prestige. 

What gives the wage-earners, however, their 
greatest influence in this war is the old law of supply 
and demand which, for once, works in their favour. 
Theirs is a scarcity value, as it was in England after 
the Black Death. So great is the demand for labour- 
ers, not only on the battle line and in the war indus- 
tries but also for the task of keeping the civil popula- 
tion alive, that there are not enough men and women 
to go around. The industrial reserve army van- 
ishes ; each worker becomes a marginal man, essen- 
tial to the welfare of society. Their scarcity enables 
the workers not only to secure better conditions, but 
also greater political influence. They are far 
stronger, however, than their votes. Today no na- 
tion can win the war unless it has the enthusiastic 
support of the men indispensable to the maintenance 
of production. 

If, therefore, the wage-earners of all the countries 
refuse to fight except for terms which come within 



THE TRUE ALIGNMENT 173 

the meaning of their principles, the imperialistic ele- 
ments in the war will be swept away. This process 
has already begun and is making rapid headway. 
In England we find the Premier giving heed to the 
trade unions and assimiliating his peace terms to 
those that they have formulated. In France and 
Italy the same tendency is at work, though it mani- 
fests itself somewhat differently. We know less 
about Germany and Austria, although there, too, the 
governments seem increasingly concerned over the 
wage-earners' reaction towards the war. 1 We are 
still only in the beginnings of the movement. How 
far the nations may go in this direction under the 
impetus of the workers is indicated by the change 
which has come over Russia since the old bureau- 
cratic government gave way to a democratic gov- 
ernment, proletarian and socialistic in character. 
What has happened in Russia foreshadows changes, 
not necessarily similar, in other countries, in which, 
the working classes are forced up to a position of 
influence and domination. 

i Since tlie conclusion of a peace between the Central Powers on 
the one side and the Ukraine and Russia on the other, the labour un- 
rest in Germany and Austria has probably heen lessened, although 
we have no accurate information on the subject. 



CHAPTER IX 

THE WAR BENEATH THE WAR 

There was little chance of any peace based on in- 
ternationalism so long as Russia was ruled by its 
old reactionary government. The Czardom was per- 
haps the lowest form of political organization under 
which any great people lived, and to the Russian 
bureaucracy our Western ideals were simply a 
weapon to be used against the rival bureaucracy of 
Prussia. The Revolution, however, brought the 
working classes into control of the Russian govern- 
ment and for the first time we had one of the great 
belligerents dominated by a proletarian, socialistic 
group. It was from this group, saturated with Marx 
and Engels and the whole literature of social revolu- 
tion, that there issued an appeal for a settlement of 
the war based not on conquest but on international- 
ism. The Russian Democracy demanded peace 
without punitive indemnities or forced annexations. 
For this utterance the allies of New Russia were 
unprepared. Suddenly out came this blunt pro- 
posal, and decorous diplomats shuddered at its crud- 
ity. In polite circles one does not do such things. 
Besides, the plan had not been thought out. Indem- 
nities — there are many kinds of indemnities ; and as 
for annexations and quasi-annexations and the innu- 

174 



THE WAR BENEATH THE WAR 175 

merable adumbrations of annexation, they may be 
for the lasting good of the people annexed. It was 
with neat rapier-like thrusts that the spokesmen of 
the Allies punctured this preposterous pacifism of the 
Russians, this absurd generosity, which offered to 
forgo Constantinople and other valuable considera- 
tions in return for a just peace. Yet all this criti- 
cism fell short in that it failed to grasp the situation 
emotionally. The arguments were good enough, but 
more than arguments are needed to sway a big cub of 
a republic like Russia. 

It was a crude republic — in those far-away days 
of Kerensky — crude, ear-splitting and hobble-de-hoy. 
It was a pathetic republic, rent by dissensions and 
lacerated by endless talk. It was a republic con- 
ceived in the spiritual and physical hunger of gaunt, 
big-boned men, a republic born in the mud and 
blood of the trenches, and reeking of its birth-place. 
The government of New Russia was too jammed 
with intellectuals to be superlatively wise, and doubt- 
less it said and did things which to the sophisticated 
seemed ridiculous. For all that, however, it was a 
government with a certain half -blind sense of reali- 
ties, a government that felt with the common people 
of the world, and, feeling, understood. It was a 
young, impulsive, aspiring republic, not pre- 
tentiously wise, not blase, not middle-aged. Yet it 
was wiser than the democratic governments of 
Britain, France, Italy and America. 



176 THE END OF THE WAR 

Herein lay its wisdom; it dealt with men and not 
with diplomats ; it dealt with hunger, cold, wretched- 
ness, with death on the battle-field and with the 
aspirations of the unlettered, and not with musty 
formulas, diplomatic traditions and arid abstrac- 
tions. It knew that the dull millions of Russia de- 
sired peace and it believed that if the Allies could be 
brought to a renunciation of their own secret im- 
perialistic designs, they could force the German Gov- 
ernment to recede from its false position, or failing 
to do this could incite the German people to revolt. 
The heady Russian democrats had a supreme faith in 
revolutions — even in a German revolution. 

Whether they were right or wrong, who can tell? 
For my part I believe that President Wilson was 
clear-sighted when in December, 1917, he placed him- 
self — perhaps too late — in a sympathetic attitude to- 
wards the Russian position. 1 At the time, however, 
the Russians found scant sympathy in the British, 
French and Italian Foreign Offices. They were told 
to hold their tongues and fight. They were willing 
to fight ; this pleading Russian republic was patheti- 

* "All these things have been true from the very beginning of 
this stupendous war; and I cannot help thinking that if they had 
been made plain at the very outset the sympathy and enthusiasm of 
the Russian people might have been once for all enlisted on the side 
of the Allies, suspicion and distrust swept away, and a real and 
lasting union of purpose effected. Had they believed these things 
at the very moment of their revolution and had they been confirmed 
in that belief since, the sad reverses which have recently marked the 
progress of their affairs toward an ordered and stable government of 
free men might have been avoided." 



THE WAR BENEATH THE WAR 177 

cally loyal to the Alliance. Though Russia had lost 
far more heavily than any other nation, though its 
unshod half-armed soldiers had been killed by the 
millions, it was still willing to keep on with the drag- 
ging, disastrous battle, if only the Allies would con- 
tribute their share towards bringing on a democratic 
peace. Russia asked for a restatement of terms, 
eliminating all imperialistic plans. The Allies 
evaded, delayed, talked. And by evading, delaying 
and talking they killed or at least helped to kill the 
Kerensky government. They did what Germany 
alone could never have accomplished — made way for 
a Bolshevik government, willing to sign an armistice 
with Germany, willing, perhaps, even to sign a sep- 
arate peace. 

Russia is utterly weary of war. Not only of this 
war, but of the war which is to come out of this war, 
and of wars and wars to follow. She knows in her 
own person, what we in America do not yet truly 
know, that war is the negation of civilization. To 
the Russian, war is a familiar and odious companion. 
He has seen the death, disease and maiming of mil- 
lions ; the hunger, the sorrow, the weakening dread ; 
the brutalization of soldiers; the bestiality of life 
and death in the trenches. He knows of the graft 
of contractors and camp-followers ; of the poor, dis- 
eased women who accompany the soldiers; of the 
rape, mutilation, wilful murder, that occur even in 
the best regulated armies. They are philosophers 



178 THE END OF THE WAR 

in their way, these Russians, university graduates 
and peasants alike. They believe that under all the 
rank phrases of humanity and whatnot there lies in 
the warring nations the serpent of self-justification 
for brutal instincts, for the raw, blatant desire of 
national prestige and aggrandizement, for the in- 
dividual's secret will to hate and slay. They look 
out upon the carnage, which to them seems avoid- 
able, and sadly repeat, "With how little wisdom is 
the world governed!" They see through their own 
pretensions to their own raw appetites and passions 
beneath. 

They see more. The Russian Revolutionists 
opened not only the prisons but the Imperial ar- 
chives, wherein political secrets are condemned to lie 
for a century and more. In cubbyholes in formal 
offices within the Petrograd palace they found solemn 
compacts, sealed no doubt with hard red wax, con- 
cerning the "equitable indemnities" and "valuable 
compensations" which were to accrue to Nicholas 
and his bureaucrats in consideration for the mute 
mujiks to be butchered on the Vistula. These docu- 
ments revealed a devious diplomacy. Having seen 
these papers, though they had already suspected 
their existence, how could the Russians place faith 
in their own justification for the war? Who was to 
blame? Was the militarism of Germany unique in 
the world? Had Imperial Russia been faultless? 
Would war be for ever banished when some victori- 



THE WAR BENEATH THE WAR 179 

ous Russian general rode home triumphantly from 
Berlin as Bonaparte returned to Paris from Italy? 
To the Russian the analogy was uncomfortable. 

Russia wanted peace. The Revolution was over; 
the Little Father had crumpled up into a wealth^ 
and innocuous citoyen and the whole imperialistic 
system in all its loud and pretentious emptiness had 
burst. But everything remained to be done. There 
were lands to be divided and ploughed ; factories to 
be built, a new government and a new polity to be 
created. To the peasant a tight little farm seemed 
more attractive than a damp grave in the marshes, 
and to Russia as a whole the chance for a peaceful 
economic development more worth than dominion 
in Asia Minor. And in choosing the right to develop 
its own resources rather than secure Constantinople, 
the nation showed a sure instinct and a sense of 
its larger national interests. Time works on the 
side of Russia, and the Revolution gives it time. 
If Russia could secure a fair peace for herself, her 
allies and her enemies, a peace without annexations 
and without indemnities, she could afford to give up 
her imperialistic dreams. Like the United States, 
Russia is one of the big, uncrowded, and eventually 
secure nations. 

What Russia offered therefore was a common 
peace and a mutual forgiveness. To the mujik, with 
his deep sense of a primitive Christianity, with his 
good nature and his unwillingness to make fine dis- 



180 THE END OF THE WAR 

tinctions, all nations and peoples were alike sinners, 
responsible for this war. "We are all so much at 
fault, ' ' he might have said, ' ' that who struck the first 
blow or struck foul is less important than how we 
can once more be brothers. We peoples of Europe 
are not enemies but common victims of a single 
tragedy. Let there be no punishment or even as- 
sessment of blame, for all have been punished 
enough. Let us not ask what lands belong to what 
people by evil right and usage, but only 'What 
sovereignty does each of these free peoples wish to 
acknowledge I ' Let Alsace go wherever Alsatians 
freely choose. Let there be no compulsion, for com- 
pulsion is evil, no revenge, for revenge is evil, and let 
there be peace. , ' 

Considering the nation as a continuous historical 
entity, the change from Imperial to Democratic Rus- 
sia was in the nature of a conversion, a deep re- 
ligious bouleversement. And it was with the en- 
thusiasm of a new convert that Russia appealed to 
the world to end the war. It was at this moment that 
one of the greatest opportunities presented itself for 
a truly international peace. Had the United States 
at that time endorsed the proposals of the Kerensky 
government, or had she later attempted to come to 
an understanding with the Bolsheviks, the two na- 
tions, Russia and America, might have forced tbeir 
Allies to agree upon a reasonable peace and have 
compelled the German ruling classes to come to 



THE WAR BENEATH THE WAR 181 

terms. Unfortunately, President Wilson did not rise 
to the unique opportunity, and the Allies presented a 
solid opposition to Russia's request. "To end the 
war now," they replied, "is to play into the enemy's 
hands, to allow her to" prepare for a new attack." 
As for the German Government, it saw in Russia's 
generous proposals merely a chance for a subtle 
diplomatic chicanery. It made overtures. It filled 
the land with its emissaries, to whom Russia, 
anxious for peace, listened patiently. But it soon 
appeared that what Germany wanted was not what 
Russia wanted, a universal peace based on justice, 
but a separate peace and a free hand against her 
Western enemies. Germany's ideals and ambitions 
were those of the parchments in the Russian ar- 
chives. What Russia had been Germany still was. 
Therefore Russia fought on as she was compelled 
to do. She fought because she desired to retain her 
democracy and believed that she could not retain it 
unless Germany secured hers. But her method of 
fighting was different from any the war had yet 
seen. She used intellectual and moral rather than 
physical weapons. Unable to invade Germany, or 
even to resist invasion, finding it impossible to feed 
her immense army, she changed her tactics. As she 
grew weaker she became more assertive. She felt 
no respect for the Kaiser and his bemedalled Gen- 
erals and Geheimrate and did not pretend to respect 
them. She treated these worthy dignitaries as 



182 THE END OF THE WAR 

though she and not Germany were the conqueror. 

This was a new and maddening diplomacy ; a novel 
defiance in the name not of intrinsic power and 
formidableness but of the better nature of the very 
people defied. The Russian democracy had a vast 
moral asset, a vast moral resource. It knew that 
it stood for progress, and for enlightened and pacific 
international relations. It enjoyed the prestige of 
standing for the democracies of the world, that of 
Germany included. The Russian delegates at Brest- 
Litovsk were constantly threatening the dignified 
German plenipotentiaries with the displeasure of 
the German working classes; they talked over the 
heads of these generals to the German people be- 
yond. They made no pretence of military strength, 
relying not upon their own soldiers but upon the 
mere physical difficulty of overrunning Russia and 
the moral reluctance of the German people to attempt 
the task. Take Petrograd if you wish, they prac- 
tically said; take Moscow, Irkutsk, Vladivostok. It 
will merely mean that you have more people to feed 
and keep in order, more territory to cover. Conquer 
us by all means. It was passive resistance carried 
to its logical conclusion. 

The real strength of the Bolsheviki, however, lay 
in the fact that they represented the working classes 
of the world. The war is approaching a stage 
where the workers in all the countries are rapidly 
gaining in power and influence. And what they de- 



THE WAR BENEATH THE WAR 183 

sire is something deeper than the democracy which 
prevailed in Europe and America in 1914; they de- 
mand economic and social, as well as political de- 
mocracy. They do not wish the world to be made 
safe for societies ruled by trust magnates and lesser 
capitalists, with all their sinuous retainers and wrig- 
gling hangers-on. They have nothing to do with a 
democracy based upon the exploitation of the poor. 
Here we have a new variant of the theory of a 
democratic war. No longer does the issue hinge 
chiefly upon the relations between states but be- 
tween social classes. The doctrine is obviously early 
socialist, before socialism had been toned down by 
half a century of parliamentarianism and com- 
promise, and before it had become realistic or 
learned to make distinctions. This proletarian de- 
mocracy is different, in aspiration at least, from any 
other that we know. Its temper bears the same rela- 
tion to that of the channelled democracies of AVest- 
ern Europe as did Primitive Christianity to some cf 
our well-starched faiths of today. It is violent, ex- 
treme, vaguely generous, vaguely denunciatory, car- 
ing more for the idea than for the narrow reality, 
preferring a large failure to a little victory. It is a 
Democracy with more faith than knowledge, bound 
to be disappointed, and prepared for disappoint- 
ment. 1 It is a Democracy which opposes not only 

i Today (March 0, 1018) the Holsheviki seem to have failed com- 
pletely either to make a reasonable peace, to offer passive resistance, 
or to awaken the German proletariat to revolt. 



184 THE END OF THE WAR 

Militarism, Autocracy and Conquest but also such 
cherished institutions as Private Property and 
Privilege. 

To us this sudden jump of the Bolsheviki into the 
saddle is not only of intrinsic interest but is of even 
greater importance as a symptom of a world-wide 
revelation, and of a coming world-wide revolution. 
This Democracy of the Proletariat or Dictatorship 
of the Proletariat — whichever it is — will not guide 
Russia permanently, for it will either go down or 
change. Yet it is not only the father to more stable 
democracies to follow but is above all else the de- 
tached interpreter of the war. To tbese Bolsheviki, 
this portentous war of ours is not the true war, but 
a superficial conflict. There is a war beneath the 
war, a war of the poor and exploited of all the world 
against all exploiters, big and little, respectable and 
disreputable. The goal to which the Bolsheviki look 
is a society in which all shall have an equal opportun- 
ity to develop latent faculties, where every child born 
of woman is to have his place in the sun. Compared 
to this projected revolution of the entire world what 
matter whether the poor of Trieste are exploited by 
; Austrian or Italian capitalists? 

All through the civilized world this conception 
of the war beneath the war appears in one form or 
another. In Italy, France, England, Germany, the 
United States there runs a current, weak or strong, 
against class domination. The victory is to be 



THE WAR BENEATH THE WAR 185 

gained by and for the only class that has never been 
victorious. Already labour has to be placated. 
What labour thinks, what labour will do in a given 
contingency, is the overriding problem. This pro- 
letarian impulse, which may be traced in its growth 
and its growing severance from the governments, 
was obvious even before the war. The Russian 
revoltes welcomed the world conflict because they 
hoped that it would precipitate the social revolution, 
as the Crimean War had emancipated the serfs and 
the Japanese War inaugurated the constitutional 
system. So, too, in Italy, syndicalists hoped that the 
war would disrupt their own inefficient capitalistic 
system. Today similar ideas reveal themselves else- 
where. To what was Lord Lansdowne's appeal at- 
tributed, rightly or wrongly, except to the fear that 
the war, if continued, would bring to the surface 
the greater war beneath the war, and this social 
upheaval would consign all lords, spiritual and 
temporal, as well as lords by the grace of financial 
accumulation, to one indiscriminate scrap heap? If 
that were democracy, and it were to leave the mas- 
ters of the world penniless, might they not fight too 
long for it ? 

Such is the meaning of the Russian propaganda 
as it has culminated in the activities of the Bolshe- 
viki. It is the impulse and sentiment behind this 
movement, not its specific manifestations, that are 
significant. Undoubtedly these Russian revolution- 



186 THE END OF THE WAR 

ists have committed absurdities because they are an 
unbelievably literal folk, taking their religion and 
economics so textually that we temporizing people, 
who like even our virtues in decent moderation, are 
bewildered and repelled. But absurdities, excesses 
and boundless inefficiencies do not count in the long 
run, and what remains is an essential truth hidden 
under grotesque exaggerations, a real fidelity to a 
crude force working for a true socialized democracy. 
And all this is not a Russian, but a world phenome- 
non. The Russian Revolution is merely the visible 
part of the iceberg. 

Some of the actions of these wild Bolsheviki have 
been wise. We have long talked about open diplo- 
macy but no government ever before picked up an 
armful of secret treaties and threw them out of the 
window to the journalists below. By so doing the 
Russians cleared the atmosphere astonishingly. 
They were also able to achieve what the Allied 
diplomats had failed to accomplish — to reveal the 
German Government's plans of conquest. It would 
be a world tragedy, however, if the Bolsheviki were 
to be induced to sign a permanent treaty with Ger- 
many. An exploitation of Russian socialism by 
German imperialists would be a disastrous blow 
against world democracy. 

What eventual success the Bolsheviki will have, 
even if they secure a long lease of political control, 
is problematical. They are attempting in the face of 



THE WAR BENEATH THE WAR 187 

opposition at home and abroad to perform a difficult, 
perhaps an intrinsically impossible task. They are 
seeking to erect a full-fledged socialistic state upon a 
society which has not gone through the long dis- 
cipline of capitalism. They are dealing with un- 
educated people, who have not yet made themselves 
into the acquisitive, short-sighted but clear-viewed 
men and women who constitute the population of 
capitalistic countries. They are working with a so- 
ciety in which resources are undeveloped and eco- 
nomic organization is primitive, in competition 
with highly organized and efficient capitalistic so- 
cieties. Can they hold together 1 ? Can they bind 
into some sort of union the miscellaneous artisans, 
peasants and shopkeepers of the vast Russian re- 
public? Can they enthuse with a common inspira- 
tion millions of different race and language within 
their country? Or will they not break down through 
a lack of internal cohesion and be forced to take up 
again the long march toward social co-operation 
through a gradually enfolding capitalistic develop- 
ment ? 

If they do fail, they will still have succeeded. 
Though the Russian socialistic democracy prove 
blind, unripe and incapable of immediate survival, it 
will have spoken a word that has appealed to mil- 
lions, not only in Russia but in other lands. What 
the Bolsheviki do, even though they end ingloriously 
in some morass, will break the spell of centuries and 



188 THE END OF THE WAR 

give a new hope to men who have always devoutly 
believed that only those who were born with spurs 
could ride, and all others must look up to the riders 
reverently. They have given birth to the hope that 
the time is not far off when the common people of the 
world will be wise enough to rule. In the long, slow- 
moving history of democracy the Bolsheviki, what- 
ever their disasters, will take their place. For to 
these unlettered workmen the war has become, in a 
sense which we in America can hardly comprehend, a 
war for democracy. The War Beneath the War 
stands revealed. 

Yet war is not won by inspiration alone, nor by 
a vision of a beautiful society to come. It is won 
in the present against present obdurate enemies, and 
those who do not see quite so far into the future have 
often an advantage over those who look a century 
ahead. Whatever the ultimate hope of the great 
ascension of the working classes of the world, there 
lies today athwart the path of these workers a power- 
ful and aggressive nation in which the wage-earners, 
, though class-conscious, are held down by force and 

1 prestige. Whether we seek the democracy that 
Earl Grey and Lloyd George seek or the broader 
democracy demanded by the Bolsheviki, we must 
| sooner or later obtain the adhesion of our last ally, 
the democratic masses of Germany. 



CHAPTER X 

IS GERMANY INCORRIGIBLE? 

Much ink has been spilled over the question whether 
the German people — as distinguished from its Gov- 
ernment — is responsible for this war. Some writers 
attach blame to the Emperor alone, to the Crown 
Prince, to a few military chiefs and Hotspur profes- 
sors; others accuse the clamorous sect of Pan-Ger- 
mans; still others widen the charge to include the 
whole aristocratic brood of Junker landlords and the 
big, upstart industrialists of the Rhine, with their 
pliant accomplices in the banks, government offices 
and newspapers of Berlin. Finally the German 
people as a whole — the sixty-seven millions of it — is 
indicted. By sins of commission and omission, by 
truculence, moral insensibility or sheer lamblike obe- 
dience, the whole German population — officials, 
wage-earners, artists, musicians; the quaint toy- 
makers of Niirnberg, the half-fed mill-girls of Chem- 
nitz; hotel-keepers, pawnbrokers, insurance agents, 
hucksters, peasants, philanthropists, prostitutes and 
poets, all of the vast German people in its complete 
integrity has, it is claimed, brought upon itself this 
sin. It has at least a secondary guilt as an accom- 
plice after the fact. 

Our official theory absolves the German people. 

189 



190 THE END OF THE WAR 

We, the American nation, are alleged to be fighting 
against an autocratic government but are on terms 
of friendship and amity with the excellent German 
people. "We have no quarrel," said President 
Wilson in his war message of April 2, 191 7, ' ' with the 
German people. We have no feeling towards them 
but one of sympathy and friendship. It was not 
upon their impulse that their Government acted in 
entering this war. It was not with their previous 
knowledge or approval." 

Obviously this theory cannot be carried over into 
the actual conduct of the war. We speak of "alien 
enemies" and place moderate restrictions upon the 
Germans within our midst. It is the German peo- 
ple, not the Kaiser alone, against whom we shoot 
our guns and whom we seek to starve. We fight not 
only against Germany's armed forces but as far as 
necessary against her whole population. Nor can 
we assume that the German people is out of sym- 
pathy with its government. Though there was a 
German peace party in 1914, it was less strong than 
similar peace groups in England and America. We 
cannot honestly claim that in joining the Alliance 
we are meeting the wishes of the German rank and 
file. The most we can assert is that this deluded 
people will eventually recognize that we, its apparent 
enemies, are forwarding its cause. We are fighting, 
says Mr. Wilson, for the liberation of the world's 
peoples, "the German peoples included." 



IS GERMANY INCORRIGIBLE? 191 

To Germans who are making the last sacrifice 
for their Government this large assumption of ours 
seems insolent and hypocritical, a calculated appeal 
to our own citizens of German birth. Yet in the 
past similar claims have often been validated. In 
our Revolutionary War Americans did fight the 
battle of British Liberals against George the Third, 
and in the Civil War the victory of the North proved 
in the end a benefit to the white majority of the 
South. The very fact that the claim can be honestly 
advanced is an indictment against a semi-autocratic 
government. Because the German political system 
is so largely unrepresentative, the charge that its 
government may be fought by a nation friendly to its 
people is likely to be made. 

The question whether government or people is 
our enemy is not purely academic, since upon its 
answer depend the terms of peace which, in the 
event of victory, we can safely propose. We are en- 
deavouring to base peace upon a new state of world 
society, in which all the nations will live together 
under a common international morality and a com- 
mon international law. But such a system is impos- 
sible if one of the greatest of the world's peoples is 
hopelessly militaristic and aggressive and cannot be 
trusted. We are not soon likely to place our faith 
in the German Government. We fear the over-might 
and irresponsibility of the ruling class. The mili- 
tarists are too powerful, and their minds too set 



192 THE END OF THE WAR 

upon adventure and dominion. They can evoke war 
too suddenly. Under such a government, says Mr. 
Wilson, "cunningly contrived plans of deception or 
aggression, carried, it may be from generation to 
generation, can be worked out and kept from the light 
— within the privacy of courts or behind the carefully 
guarded confidences of a narrow and privileged 
class. ' ' With a republic in Germany we should feel 
more secure if the nation as a whole were fair-minded 
and pacific. 

Since our actual entrance into the war, however, 
a change in our mood has come about in our attitude 
towards the German people similar to that which 
took place in England after 1914. At first the 
British leaders, hoping for a German revolution, 
made much of this distinction between government 
and people, but when the anticipated revolt did not 
occur, the German people were harshly condemned. 
They were described as docile, brutal, scientifically- 
barbarous state-worshippers and self-worshippers. 
The Germans, wrote Professor Sayce, "are still what 
they were fifteen centuries ago, the barbarians who 
raided our ancestors ( !) and destroyed the civiliza- 
tion of the Roman Empire. " "No terms, ' ' wrote Sir 
Alfred E. Turner, "can safely be made with such a 
people of outsiders, to whom the quality of mercy 
is not known, and who, like all other savages, regard 
generosity and forbearance as signs of weakness." * 

i Saturday Review, Vol. 120, Sept. 18, 1915. 



IS GERMANY INCORRIGIBLE? 193 

The German nation, said Major General C. E. Call- 
well, is "a nation of barbarians, a nation without 
honour, without chivalry, and without shame, ' ' a na- 
tion from whom "paper guarantees are worse than 
worthless," * a nation that must be crushed and per- 
manently held down by force. 

Today many Americans think likewise. It is 
claimed that the whole present generation of Ger- 
mans is so inoculated with the vices of submissive- 
ness, militarism and regimentation that there re- 
mains no hope for them except killing. No one is 
quite logical enough to advocate the surgical ster- 
ilization of sixty-seven millions or their wholesale 
slaughter in cold blood, but one encounters here and 
there the more modest program of killing and maim- 
ing a dozen million Germans to encourage the others 
to a peace-loving life. 

Without quite this amiable ferocity other Amer- 
icans permit themselves to be guided by conceptions 
equally rigid. They despair of Germany ever en- 
tering into a better state of mind. They pretend to 
believe that Germans are universally and inerad- 
icably brutal, aggressive and militaristic, without 
honour or compunction, the mad dogs of the world, 
to be shot at sight. They ridicule the clumsy dis- 
tinction between Prussians and non-Prussians, be- 
tween militarists and gentle, beer-drinking idealists, 
since not every one who lives in Prussia is in this 

i Blackwood's Magazine, Vol. 200, Aug., lf>16, p. 283. 



194 THE END OF THE WAR 

sense a Prussian and many Saxons, Bavarians and 
Hessians are more Prussian than the Junker. Some 
Americans even claim that all Germans are respon- 
sible specifically, for all the outrages committed by 
the German armies, since at no time has an effective 
protest been levelled despite numberless atrocities. 
There is unfortunately much truth in this charge. 
Admitting that Germans receive a false account of all 
happenings, there still remain a popular insensibility 
and an unwillingness to express even disapproval, 
which are discouraging features of a lack of a revo- 
lutionary sense. 

To some extent, however, war brutalizes all na- 
tions. But for the passions evoked by war, the 
Allied nations could not view with their present 
peace of mind the tragedy of the slow starvation of 
the German people, the death of babies and of 
the aged and the fearful ravages of tuberculosis. I 
do not claim that this starvation policy is unjustified, 
but only that it is tragic. Similarly we in the Allied 
countries have read with pain of Russian atrocities 
against Polish Jews and did not protest. Instead we 
passed over hastily to the story of Belgium, where 
our pity and horror might find free vent. War de- 
grades and solidifies nations. Primitive passions 
rise to the surface, and remorse and justice are re- 
pressed. If in the future all the peoples of the world 
were to remain what they are in war time, cruel, 
mendacious and crassly unfair, little hope could be 



IS GERMANY INCORRIGIBLE? 195 

found for international life. Even though we indict 
the whole German people of today, we should not 
carry over our conclusions into the future. Our re- 
liance upon the German people must depend pri- 
marily upon what it will prove to be in 1930, not on 
what it is today under the stress of war. 

In seeking to look into this future we are met by 
the disconcerting fact that in the past Germans, as 
compared with English, French, Italians and Rus- 
sians, have been afflicted by an extraordinary sub- 
servience and political servility. Though not true 
of all Germans this quality is characteristic of the 
traditional and admired type. Such men place an 
exaggerated value on duty, especially to superiors. 
They worship law and order, as though these were 
the supreme good instead of a mere means. Though 
they possess initiative, it lies too narrowly within 
prescribed bounds. They live too much by order; 
accept too willingly their place in a scheme of things, 
which is not an entirely bad scheme, but which leans 
to an excess of rigidity. The average German is too 
philosophical and above all too subjective concerning 
political arrangements. He believes that freedom 
lies in one 's own soul, that a man is free if his mind 
travels at ease over all the facts of life, though a 
police official stand outside his study door. At once 
constrained and protected, he is not at liberty to 
indulge wayward impulses though he is safe from 
the wayward impulses of neighbours. He has grown 



196 THE END OF THE WAR 

to love his neat routine, his clean streets, his Sunday 
music, his ordered life, in which many things which 
more restless peoples lose are conserved for him. 
The vice of the German, in other words, is that 
he has too many virtues; he is too disciplined, 
contented, submissive, unrevolutionary. Long and 
loudly have we praised this modest, dutiful and self- 
abnegating German, who meddles with no man. 
Possibly, however, it is this very man who is most to 
blame for Germany's aggressive policy, if indeed we 
can speak in terms of praise or blame on this high 
level, where opposing nations, institutions and prin- 
ciples clash. 

Fortunately, however, this docile and dutiful subr 
ject does not constitute the whole German popula- 
tion. A new man comes to the fore, more nervous, 
mobile and discontented. One finds him among the 
pushing business organizers, among wage-earners, 
schooled in the trade union and the Socialist party; 
one finds him even among peasants. This new Ger- 
man holds but weakly to the traditions of subservi- 
ence and to love of dynasty. He is more likely to 
fight for democracy and liberty. Such men have not 
yet been willing to die by thousands for their new 
ideal, and on the contrary they have died by hun- 
dreds of thousands for the things against which they 
strive. Yet here a leaven works. Here is a growing 
force, opposed to the prevailing submissiveness. 

When, therefore, we inquire whether after the war 



IS GERMANY INCORRIGIBLE? 197 

the German people will be strongly militaristic we 
are met by perplexing difficulties. There are three 
general theories supporting the prophecy of a per- 
manent German militarism. The first is that Ger- 
mans are by heredity submissive and militaristic; the 
second, that they are so by reason of a thousand- 
year-long discipline, during which these qualities 
have become fixed mental habits, in harmony with 
their whole body of habits, and, therefore, not to be 
uprooted in a few generations. The third theory is 
more optimistic. It asserts that the submissive and 
militaristic quality of the Germans has been bred by 
an intensive education lasting forty years, and that 
at best we must wait for a new generation before we 
may expect a reassuring change. 

All of these theories seem exaggerated. The last 
thousand years have doubtless tended to produce 
habits of submissiveness in Germans, and popular 
education since 1870 has more obviously worked in 
this direction than in other countries. We have, 
therefore, to deal not only with conviction but habit. 
In these days, however, habits are easily broken. 
Five years of city life so completely transform the 
young peasant, despite a thousand years of rural 
habituation, that he can never return to his country 
life. Ancient loyalties vanish swiftly; Russia 
changes over-night and China itself accepts new val- 
uations of life. And even as early as 1914 the Ger- 
mans were not mere tools. They read newspapers, 



198 THE END OF THE WAR 

and even a government-controlled press cannot in 
peace time keep out all the news. The Germans 
amused themselves with all sorts of mild insubordi- 
nations and gently insurrectionary ideas. There 
were millions who were not submissive and not mil- 
itaristic. 

So real was this latent refractoriness of certain 
elements of the German population that the Gov- 
ernment was forced to resort to falsehood to secure 
a united public opinion. It alleged that the Cos- 
sacks had already invaded Prussia, that the French 
had bombarded German cities, that a league of na- 
tions had plotted against the Fatherland, and that 
the Kaiser had done all he could to avert the conflict. 
Upon this distortion of facts it was difficult for a 
patriotic German, however democratically and inter- 
nationally inclined, to refuse to defend his country. 
Moreover, following the war's outbreak the entire 
history of forty years was reinterpreted to make 
Germany appear the attacked party. The theory of 
encirclement, the theory of Russian ambition, French 
revenge and British envy, united against a pious 
and contented German people, the theory of a crafty 
world-destroyer in the person of Edward the Sev- 
enth, were resurrected and revamped. Unfortu- 
nately there was just enough in the past actions of 
Russia, France and England to give a measure of 
plausibility to these charges. Further, a deep-lying 
economic unrest and an uncertainty concerning Ger- 



IS GEEMANY INCORRIGIBLE? 199 

many's economic future rendered the Germans more 
than usually credulous. The Slav invasion seemed 
a real peril; the attempted forcible dissolution of 
Austria-Hungary could not but be envisaged as a 
menace to Germany's safety. Moreover certain 
groups, far from following a mere instinct of loy- 
alty, confidently expected a concrete economic gain 
from the war. Not sheer love of dominion recon- 
ciled the Germans to this conflict but an intricate 
complex of ideas and emotions of which greed, fear, 
and a desire to preserve class prestige and power 
formed a part. Finally stupidity and bad-faith on 
the part of Germany's neighbours rendered the 
growth of a war-spirit, once war began, absolutely 
certain. 

With the early German victories a sinister change 
came over the population. Even before the war 
there had been manifested an insolent and pedantic 
self-exaltation, accompanied by an immoderate de- 
preciation of other nations. German faith, German 
virtue, das deutsche Wesen were fulsomely praised, 
and the real successes of Germany in science, music, 
business and government were grossly exaggerated. 
A febrile chauvinism, due to Germany's rapid prog- 
ress, was exploited, and plans of conquest were read 
by millions of once placid people, devoutly believing 
that Germany should have its wide place in the sun. 
Finally this self-exaltation became monstrous. De- 
rided by all other cultural nations, Germany fell back 



200 THE END OF THE WAR 

upon herself, appealing from the adverse judgment 
of the civilized world to fantastic self-laudation. 
"If God is for us," said Pastor Walter Lehmann, 
"who can be against us? It is enough for us to be a 
part of God." "Germany is the centre of God's 
plans for the world," we are "a nation which is 
God's seed-corn for the future." "Germany is the 
future of humanity." * 

To those who wish to observe how abruptly Ger- 
many's critical spirit crumbled under the stress of 
war, hundreds of pamphlets and books are now avail- 
able. 2 They show a dismal mental degeneration, an 
illimitable self-praise bordering on insanity, and to- 
wards foreign nations a fury of vindictive hatred 
which must have left the intellectual gutter-snipes of 
other lands speechless with envy. This violent self- 
laudation, moreover, was but the floral decoration 
for a mania for conquest, which spread like fire over 
the country. It was held that Germany, having been 
successful in her defensive war, was justified in 
utilizing the chance of a thousand years to redress 
the injustices of geography and history. The wild- 
est programs of annexation were boldly announced. 

This is the case against the German people. They 
are still at a comparatively low stage in democratic 

iBang (J. P.) "Hurrah and Hallelujah," p. 75. 

2 Of these perhaps the best compilation i3 the heavily documented 
little book of Dr. J. P. Bang, Professor of Theology at the University 
of Copenhagen, entitled "Hurrah and Hallelujah, The Teaching of 
Germany's Poets, Prophets, Professors and Preachers." 



IS GERMANY INCORRIGIBLE? 201 

evolution, enduring an unrepresentative govern- 
ment and displaying as yet little talent for revolu- 
tion; they were, before 1914, in a mood of self- 
exaltation ; they made few and weak protests against 
the barbaric conduct of their war; finally they con- 
curred, to a surprising extent, in plans of aggression 
and conquest. 

The admission of every count of this indictment, 
however, does not leave us hopeless for the future. 
These German failures are accounted for by the 
events of the last half-century. The success of Bis- 
marck's diplomacy, the easy victories over Austria 
and France, a rapidly growing sea-power, an ex- 
panding German industry, the ultra-sudden trans- 
lation of the peasant to new industrial cities — in 
short an astounding revolution in German life, both 
in external and internal aspects, suffices to explain 
this change in mentality. Yet what has been altered 
can be altered again, and what destroyed restored. 
The popular German conceptions of 1914 have been 
vastly changed. Unless Germany wins this war, as 
a result of the blunders and short-sightedness of the 
Allies, the Germans will never again believe that 
France is decadent, Russia barbarous, Great Britain 
incapable. Never again will they believe that Ger- 
many is the only land of Kultur. Nor, barring such 
a victory, will it longer seem wise to entrust their 
affairs to a fist-banging Junkertum, efficient in war- 
fare but bungling in the large diplomacy without 



202 THE END OF THE WAR 

which war plans are like playing with tin soldiers. 
The Germans have been on an emotional debauch. 
They have refused to be sobered. Yet sober, never- 
theless, they must inevitably become. As nation 
after nation enters the war, registering its protest 
against German polity, as these external admoni- 
tions become reinforced by the tedium of a war, 
which persists tragically despite German conquests, 
the mood in Germany changes. A spirit of ques- 
tioning begins to manifest itself. 

The beginnings of this change in mood are already 
discernible although they are obscured by the strict 
and subtle German censorship which tells the news- 
papers not only what not to say but also what to 
say. The courageous action of Karl Liebknecht, 
the strong protests of the Minority Socialists, to say 
nothing of the famous Reichstag Majority program, 
(in which Socialists, Clericals and other parties 
joined), indicate, as do also the frequent suppres- 
sions of the Vorwarts and other journals, that there 
is a real sentiment in Germany for a constructive 
peace making for internationalism. In Austria this 
sentiment appears to be even stronger. It is easy to 
belittle this underground movement and to deride 
it because it is suppressed. But for twelve years 
(from 1878 to 1890), the German Socialist Party was 
itself suppressed, and yet grew rapidly under the 
clamped lid. When the official pressure relaxes a 
little we may be surprised at the rapidity with which 



IS GERMANY INCORRIGIBLE? 203 

liberalism, democracy and revolt against autocracy 
have been swelling under the heel of the militarists. 1 

From the mass of evidence on both sides, there- 
fore, it is safe to conclude that the Germans are not 
by race or heredity militaristic, and that their tra- 
ditions and education, which incline them in that 
direction, are being negated by powerful influences, 
springing out of new industrial conditions and out 
of contact with foreign nations. The discipline of 
the great city, factory, trade union, co-operative so- 
ciety, is relentlessly opposed to submissiveness. 
This new discipline, although unfavourably influ- 
enced by the barracks, tends to become stronger. 
The will to revolt grows, even though the revolt 
seems superficially to be a very German, slow and 
scientifically predetermined and bloodless revolt. 2 

On the other hand the revolt, when it comes, if it 

i It is not improbable, however, that this very growth of liberal 
sentiment, to which President Wilson has repeatedly appealed, will 
be a factor in postponing the end of the war. The more insecure 
the German autocracy feels itself the harder and longer will it right 
in the hope of a saving victory. 

2 Even Professor Veblen, who believes that Germany, like Japan, i9 
relatively unchangeable, and must be "eliminated," is not hopeless 
concerning the ultimate growth of parliamentary discretion in Ger- 
many. "It may be true that, for the present, on critical or weighty 
measures the parliamentary discretion extends no farther than re- 
spectfully to say 'Ja toohl.' But then, Ja wohl is also something; 
and there is no telling where it may all lead to in the long course 
of years. One has a vague apprehension that this 'Ja icohV may 
some day come to be a customarily necessary form for authentication, 
so that withholding it (Behiit es doit) may even come to count 
ns an effectual veto on measures so pointedly neglected." The 
Nature of Peace, by Thorstein Veblen, New York, 1917, pp. 191-92. 



204 THE END OF THE WAR 

does come, may not be at all slow or bloodless. It 
is true that we are here trenching upon the field of 
speculation, where we must trust to insecure esti- 
mates of vague facts. What is clear, however, is 
that the much derided submissiveness of the Ger- 
mans finds its cause, not only in an unfortunate his- 
torical development, but equally in the fact that the 
government against which the German people would 
have to revolt is in the highest degree both capable 
and ruthless. To overthrow the Russian bureau- 
cracy required many decades of propaganda and 
preparation, and yet that task was child's play com- 
pared to an attempt to destroy the immensely com- 
petent, long-headed, and heavy-fisted Prussian oli- 
garchy. Prestige, wealth, science, organizing ability, 
as well as a remarkable capacity for tempering au- 
tocracy to the governed, all work in favour of the 
German ruling classes and against any overt revolu- 
tionary act. To assail with bare hands the effi- 
cient German government, propped up by a million 
loyal civil servants and a million bayonets, is a task 
likely to appeal to none but a desperate man. 

At the end of this war, however, assuming that 
Germany does not win the war, there are likely to 
be many such desperate men in Germany. The 
war has taught the soldier not to over-value life, 
not to care overmuch whether he is shot in the 
trenches, starved in his home, or garroted by the 
public executioner. There will be many who will 



IS GERMANY INCORRIGIBLE? 205 

not hold their life at a high price. If then, by any- 
chance, a stray shot starts a popular uprising, and if, 
as is not inconceivable, the army itself proves to be 
infected with revolutionary ideas, the change that 
will come over the spirit of German life may be as 
complete and startling as any in human history. 
The millions of intelligent German workers, who 
have so wonderfully managed their trade unions, 
their co-operative stores and their Socialist Party 
would be able to organize a revolution quite as thor- 
oughly. Of course they will not rebel while they 
believe that a collapse of Germany would mean her 
spoliation by enemies at the frontier. They may 
not even rebel after the war. And yet they may. 
Only a rash prophet would predict that German so- 
ciety and the German state of mind will be the same, 
ten, five or even two years hence as they are today. 

Even before the war the prestige of the German 
ruling classes was gradually sinking, and a few 
more decades of peace might easily have brought it 
to an end. Nothing but a complete German victory 
can now make the war worth its cost, and even a 
complete victory may fail to do so. Defeated, or 
merely frustrated, Germany's rulers would have to 
go back to their people comparatively empty-handed. 
It would be the beginning of the end of her militar- 
ism. 

The education of the German people during the 
war will be continued in peace. They will then have 



206 THE END OP THE WAR 

ample time to count their dead and maimed, cast up 
their losses, and apportion the blame — and the taxes. 
They will not be entirely proud of their record. The 
German commercial traveller in foreign lands will 
hear many unpleasant truths, and what is told him he 
will tell again. Credulity, prejudice, passion will in 
a measure pass. The judgment of the outside world, 
tempered by the calmness of peace, will have its ap- 
peal. The foreign arraignment of their ruling 
classes will eventually be accepted as true by those 
Germans who for political reasons desire to attack 
their government. 

A frustration of Germany thus means a growth of 
democracy, a change in her political balance of 
power and a revolution in her opinions and pre- 
possessions, which will cause submissiveness to de- 
cline and render improbable a new attack. 



CHAPTEE XI 

A CONCLUSIVE PEACE 

In a speech delivered in January, 1918, former Pres- 
ident Roosevelt said: "We must accept no peace ex- 
cept the peace of overwhelming victory. To accept 
an inconclusive peace would mean that the whole war 
would have to be fought over again by ourselves or 
our children. To accept an inconclusive peace would 
really mean to work for a German victory." 

According to Mr. Roosevelt there is no "half way 
ground." "Either we are fighting to give liberty to 
the subject races in Austria and Turkey, either we 
are fighting for the complete independence of the 
Czecho-Slovaks, the Jugo-Slavs, the Poles, the 
Rumanians, and Italians under the Austro-Hun- 
garian yoke, and the Armenians and Jews and Syr- 
ian Christians and Arabs under the Turkish yoke, 
or else we were guilty of hypocrisy when we an- 
nounced that our purpose was to make the world 
safe for democracy. Unless Belgium is restored and 
indemnified and France restored and indemnified 
justice will not have prevailed." l 

The fundamental assumptions in this vigorous 
speech of Mr. Roosevelt's are that no peace can be 

iNew York Times, January 13, 1918. 

207 



208 THE END OF THE WAR 

conclusive unless the victory is overwhelming, and 
that such a conclusive victory can be rendered more 
secure by the imposition of drastic terms. In mak- 
ing these assumptions, Mr. Roosevelt has gone back 
to the methods of thought which prevailed on both 
sides in the early part of the war. First victory, 
then onerous terms imposed upon the defeated 
enemy, and finally the furtherance of such aims as 
the victors consider essential. That some of those 
aims may be imperialistic, and may have the effect of 
undermining any international basis for the peace 
proposed does not seem to enter into his serious con- 
sideration. The internationalism which is associ- 
ated with this method of thought is not in any 
sense unforced, but rather the imposition upon the 
law-breaking nations of an international law in 
the interests of the victors. That in each country 
the law-breaking nation is assumed to be the enemy 
goes without saying. 

The remainder of Mr. Roosevelt's speech indicates 
clearly the state of international relations which he 
anticipates in the event of his overwhelming victory. 
After, as before, we shall be required to arm to the 
teeth in order permanently "to guarantee future 
peaceful and just development at home, and future 
immunity from attacks by outside nations." Mr. 
Roosevelt's overwhelming victory does not lead to 
peace, but merely to a permanent military prepared- 
ness and a permanent liability to attack. 



A CONCLUSIVE PEACE 209 

Even though we hoped for nothing but this in- 
definite perpetuation of latent hostilities, it is doubt- 
ful whether Mr. Roosevelt's overwhelming victory 
would be efficacious. Its effect, of course, would be 
to annihilate the military strength of Germany, 
which might or might not be a permanent advantage. 
Assuming a continuance of hostile international re- 
lations, it does not follow that our next enemy will 
surely be Germany. But the chief argument against 
the presumed necessity of a conclusive victory is 
that such a victory does not necessarily lead to a 
conclusive peace, but may have an exactly opposite 
effect. 

In 1866, when Prussia won a decisive victory over 
Austria, the peace was conclusive not because the 
victory was overwhelming, but because the natural 
evolution of the German nation made impossible a 
leadership by Austria, a preponderatingly non-Ger- 
man state. On the other hand, the German victory 
over France in 1870 was crushing, but the peace 
was inconclusive. It was a punitive peace, based on 
outlived conceptions of international life, and did 
not, in effect, solve the outstanding problems be- 
tween the two countries. The result was that for al- 
most half a century the war between France and Ger- 
many continued under a different form. Similarly a 
nonconclusive war may lead to a conclusive peace. 
In 1812 the United States fought a somewhat inglo- 
rious war with Great Britain, which ended in no vie- 



210 THE END OF THE WAR 

tory, but with both countries, and especially the 
United States, anxious to make peace. The issues 
which led to the struggle were not even mentioned 
in the resulting treaty, for during the war the con- 
ditions leading to the raising of those issues had 
ended. The inconclusive war was followed by a hun- 
dred years of peace, whereas had a completely vic- 
torious England imposed punitive terms, the peace 
would have been inconclusive. 

Nor to be conclusive must a peace be onerous or 
vindictive. It is a common feeling that no settle- 
ment is conclusive unless the enemy is so weakened 
that he will not again dare to resort to arms. "It is 
all very well to forgive," say many of our spokes- 
men, "to look ahead, to seek to promote a distant 
internationalism, but in the meanwhile we must live, 
and we cannot live under the menace of a new Ger- 
man attack. With Germany permanently weak- 
ened, we are safe for a generation or two, but if 
remaining strong she returns to her militarism, our 
last case will be worse than the first." 

The argument deserves consideration. However 
much we desire internationalism, we can accept it 
only on the condition of security. Safety comes 
first. Therefore we cannot permit Germany to palm 
off upon us a false and specious internationalism, 
and we cannot accept a truce which will give an un- 
regenerate enemy time to recover. All proposals 
must be examined with care and even a shade of 



A CONCLUSIVE PEACE 211 

suspicion and we must insist that the international- 
ism secured be more than a matter of words. 

But the policy of weakening the enemy, which is 
offered as a real security against the war's renewal 
is, as has often been proved, no security at all. The 
difficulty lies not in downing a nation but in keeping 
it down. The Treaty of Frankfort again illustrates 
the point. In 1871 the German generals, believing 
that France would begin a war of revenge at the 
earliest moment, sought to weaken her by levying 
a heavy indemnity and annexing territories of eco- 
nomic and strategic value. This, however, far from 
ending, merely increased the French menace. 
France became irreconcilable; thenceforth she was 
the perpetual enemy, the centre of every antag- 
onistic alliance. The resulting fear dictated the 
entire foreign policy of Bismarck; all his alliances 
were an attempt to isolate this ancient enemy and 
keep her helpless. But year by year "the French 
mortgage," incurred or at least enhanced by the 
harsh Treaty of Frankfort, weighed heavier. Ger- 
many could not compete with Great Britain, could 
not enter into vast colonial enterprises without rec- 
ognizing that in whatever war she engaged France, 
weakened in 1871, would be her powerful enemy. 
Germany would probably have been stronger during 
the last forty years had she trusted to a future recon- 
ciliation with France, as Prussia trusted Austria in 
the years following 1866. 



212 THE END OP THE WAR 

Crush Germany today, if that indeed is possible, 
and one of two things will happen : Either she will 
recover and fight again, or she will seek safety and 
power in new and hostile alliances. To place a re- 
vengeful, even though a weakened, Germany in the 
middle of Europe is to lay a train which will blow 
up the peace of the world. No controversy there- 
after can arise between any of the nations now in 
concert but Germany will seek to fan the flame and 
offer aid to one or the other of the combatants. A 
debilitated Germany suffering under a sense of per- 
secution and injustice would be only a little less dan- 
gerous than a strong Germany in like mood, and 
would be far more dangerous than would be a strong 
nation permitted to develop and interested in main- 
taining the peace. 

Neither by an overwhelming victory, nor by a 
crushing or weakening of the enemy, nor by any 
form of negotiated peace which does not recognize 
new principles of international relationship, can se- 
curity be maintained. All these suffer from the 
cardinal defect that they leave nations at enmity and 
the peoples of the world insecure. 

This fact becomes apparent on considering the 
possible terms of peace between the two coalitions 
in the conflict that now rages. Theoretically there 
are five general forms which peace might take. 
These are, an Overwhelming German Peace, a Par- 
tial German Victory, the Peace of the Drawn Game, 



A CONCLUSIVE PEACE 213 

a Negotiated Allied Peace, and a Dictated Allied 
Peace. These five forms run the full gamut from 
a crushing German victory to a crushing Allied vic- 
tory. 

From every point of view a complete German vic- 
tory, followed by a dictated German peace, would 
be the worst conceivable result of the war. A new 
Eoman Empire, more powerful than any that has 
existed in the world, would be set up in the middle 
of Europe. It would be for decades a bulwark of 
autocracy and militarism, and the teacher of these 
social forms to vassal and outside nations. The 
world would either be one great empire with de- 
pendencies and intimidated outlying states, or it 
would be an armed camp. Against such a German 
victory, liberals the world over must fight to the last 
ditch. 

Even a partial German victory would be exces- 
sively dangerous. What Germany seeks today is a 
peace of give and take, of Ver standi gun g und Aus- 
gleich, as former Chancellor Michaelis styled it. 
She seeks a "cashing in" on her "paper profits." 
So far she has won the war on land but as against 
her conquests the Allies possess an ultimate superi- 
ority in men, money and munitions, a superiority, 
however, which depends upon their ability to bring 
America's full force to bear upon the Western front. 
The joint resources of the Allies are still increasing 
while those of Germany diminish. Like Japan in 



214 THE END OF THE WAR 

1905, Germany today has won battles but runs the 
danger of losing if the war continues. Having what 
she wants she sees no further reason for fighting. 

The present conquests of the Central Powers are 
in the West (Belgium and France), the East (Rus- 
sia), in the Southeast (Serbia, Montenegro and Rou- 
mania) and the Southwest (Italy). They are ap- 
parently willing to give up one or two of these 
conquests to preserve the rest. It is a wise modera- 
tion. But for us such a peace is difficult to accept. 
To allow an unregenerate Germany to emerge from 
this war with immense visible territorial gains 
would be not only to give her an enormous over- 
weight in Europe but to strengthen the power of 
her imperialistic group. The Junker might then 
abandon his pretence of a defensive war and openly 
boast of his conquests. The world contest of 1914 
might even be proclaimed as a continuation of the 
succession of "glorious" wars which made Ger- 
many a World Power. Renewed in their prestige, 
the feudal rulers might snap their fingers at radi- 
cals, liberals and socialists, repeating what Bis- 
marck wrote to von Biilow: "Germany does not 
look for her salvation to Prussia 's liberalism but to 
Prussia's power." Therefore any German victory, 
either partial or complete, is dangerous. 1 

i "The German sword is our best protection." Telegram of Kaiser 
Wilhelm II, reproduced in the New York Evening Post, March 8, 
1918. 



A CONCLUSIVE PEACE 215 

It is through fear of this partial German victory 
that the Allied nations have wisely refused to enter 
into an unlimited conference with the enemy. To do 
so without a definite statement in advance of Ger- 
many's demands and concessions would be to deliver 
themselves unreservedly into hostile hands. In such 
a blind conference Germany might break up the alli- 
ance by playing off one Ally against the other. The 
Allies dare not even consider terms unless in ad- 
vance Germany contents herself with the status 
quo ante. 

Can they, however, accept even these terms ? 

Quite apart from other objections, the status quo 
is difficult, perhaps even impossible, to establish. 
It would be a delicate task to return to Germany her 
colonies without enraging Australians, South Afri- 
cans and Japanese, though, of course, it would be 
feasible to give her equivalent rights in other parts 
of the world. But the main objection to the status 
quo ante is that it is more than a mere territorial 
arrangement. It is a state of world society and a 
state of mind. To re-establish it means to return to 
the execrable conditions existing in Austria-Hungary 
and Turkey before the war. It means a recrudes- 
cence of ancient embittered hostilities in the Balkans 
and an accentuation of the old colonial strife between 
imperialistic powers. It would reawaken old jeal- 
ousies and hatreds and revive the old insecurity. 

Moreover, if Germany remains militaristic, im- 



216 THE END OF THE WAR 

perialistic and aggressive, the restoration of the 
status quo ante, without any provision for a system 
based upon internationalism, would constitute, if not 
a victory for her, at least a defeat for her enemies. 
Whatever lands she gave back, she would still hold 
Austria-Hungary. Her officers now control Austro- 
Hungarian troops; her railway managers Austro- 
Ilungarian railways; her influence at Vienna and 
Budapest is overwhelming. The same rule extends 
to Bulgaria and Turkey, united with Germany, and 
exultant over their victories. End the war on the 
basis of the status quo ante, and a militaristic auto- 
cratic Mittel-Europa stretching from Hamburg to 
Bagdad is a reality, except for a small strip of Ser- 
bian territory. 

Nor would Serbia again resist. We have read 
much of the futility of German terrorism and ulti- 
mately it was, doubtless, as stupid as brutal. But in 
its effect upon the populations afflicted it proved a 
definite asset to the German militarist. If, after 
the war, Austria and Bulgaria were to make sudden 
demands upon Serbia, where would that nation find 
the courage to oppose? She knows the heavy Ger- 
man fist ; she knows that she could be destroyed be- 
fore help came from the Allies, if it came at all. 
Even more difficult to resist would be a gradual, 
thumb-screw pressure, by which Austria might 
make successive inroads upon Serbian independence. 
Greece too would be quiescent ; Roumania also. Hoi- 



A CONCLUSIVE PEACE 217 

land, Belgium, Scandinavia and Switzerland, while 
they might preserve their dignity and independence, 
would never forget Germany's terrible attack upon 
Belgium and the incompleteness of the reparation. 
Germany has secured the prestige of terror; in 
terms of the old diplomacy it is a valuable prestige. 

Further, if the status quo ante is re-established and 
the war in peace continues after the war, Germany 
will have gained relatively by the fact that she has 
fought her battles upon the soil of her enemies. 
Who under such an arrangement would rebuild 
French, Serbian, Roumanian and Russian villages? 
The losses of the Allies from such depredations are 
many billions of dollars, and if each nation pays for 
its own broken windows the Allies suffer far more 
grievously than does Germany. Because of this 
smaller loss, because of her prestige of terror in 
neighbouring countries, and because of the cement- 
ing of a stronger union among the four central pow- 
ers, Germany might claim to have gained something 
from the war, or at least to have lost less than her 
opponents. Her Junkers, decimated and impover- 
ished though they might be, would still claim a quasi- 
victory. 

The final objection to the status quo ante, how- 
ever, is that it is utterly impossible. Even though 
we keep former boundaries, we can no longer place 
the old Humpty-Dumpty of Russian imperialism 
back upon his throne, nor can we change back Brit- 



218 THE END OF THE WAR 

ish and American sentiment to what they were be- 
fore the war. 

Had Russia not collapsed, a peace, which though 
inconclusive, would have at least rendered a new 
assault by Germany improbable, might have been 
easily possible, owing to the fact that by its very 
momentum the war has called into being forces that 
did not exist in 1914. The very strength of the at- 
tack has evoked a defence equally strong. The 
probability that Germany would not again lightly 
assail Serbia, Belgium or France, would have lain, 
even more in the forces called forth in this war than 
in the specific guarantees which it might be hoped to 
embody in a treaty of peace. 

War today is a deliberate operation, planned, pre- 
pared, and at a favourable moment, launched. The 
determination to wage war is an intellectual process. 
When on a certain day Germany's leaders agreed on 
a policy of war, their decision was based upon a 
multitude of convictions, opinions and guesses, some 
true, others false. They probably believed, rightly, 
that their big guns could smash the French for- 
tresses; otherwise they might not have declared for 
war. They probably believed that an early decision 
could be obtained against France, and that Russia 
could be defeated at leisure; had they not thought 
so they might have hesitated. They seemed to have 
believed that Belgian resistance would be negligible ; 
that England would be disinclined to intervene, and 



A CONCLUSIVE PEACE 219 

would probably hesitate until her intervention was 
ineffective. If she did intervene, troubles in Ire- 
land and her colonies might hamper her movements. 
The leaders of Germany apparently counted upon 
no assistance from Italy but they hardly anticipated 
an alliance of Italy with France and Britain. What- 
ever they thought, however, it is clear that consid- 
erations of this general nature did enter into their 
calculations, and these considerations were not ab- 
surd and unreal, but were based upon such knowl- 
edge as they had and could grasp. Weighing the 
ponderables and ignoring the imponderables, as 
militarists are likely to do, the German leaders con- 
cluded that a speedy victory was probable. The 
chances were in their favour. 

After this war what would have been the chances 
in favour of a second attack by Germany had Russia 
maintained her military strength? Obviously Ger- 
many's formidableness would have increased, since 
from the beginning her leaders could count on the ac- 
tive co-operation of four nations and upon the qui- 
escence of Serbia. But the defensive forces would 
be seen to have grown even more largely. The war 
has established the fact that the British Empire (or 
at least its self-governing colonies) is a unit. The 
immediate military strength of Great Britain is 
increased ten to twenty times. No longer would 
France and Belgium alone be forced to bear the brunt 
of the attack, since Great Britain and possibly 



220 THE END OF THE WAR 

Italy could immediately range themselves behind 
France, and behind these would be an American 
army, and the resources of a country richer than 
Germany and Austria combined. Moreover the in- 
troduction of trench warfare has rendered it more 
difficult than four years ago to gain, by an initial 
superiority in numbers, a rapid decisive victory. 
Germany could no longer overrun France in a month, 
and almost from the beginning she would fight 
against superior forces on her Western front. 

But the collapse of Russia changes all this. Ger- 
many's eastern barriers are now broken down, and 
if her present ruling classes remain in power she 
will, in the event of a re-established status quo, be 
able to exert a preponderating military influence on 
Russia. She can keep her eastern neighbour dis- 
tracted, intimidated, weak. She can bribe her offi-* 
cials, secure political and economic concessions, per- 
haps even dictate her form of government. Able to 
defend herself, at least temporarily, on the west, she 
will have an almost free hand on the east. It will 
be extremely difficult for the Allies, even with their 
control of the sea, to interfere with German plans in 
Russia. 

The inevitable conclusion is that the status quo 
ante, like a German victory, offers no satisfactory 
solution to internationalists and no security to the 
nations. 1 

i Today (March 1918) such a solution seems even more unde- 



A CONCLUSIVE PEACE 221 

Nor does a mere victory, either partial or com- 
plete, for the Allies necessarily mean a satisfactory 
state of the world. A victory may lead to a retribu- 
tive peace, to a vindictive policy, or to a mere bar- 
gaining and haggling, out of which the nations may 
gain territory but no real advantage. Such a vic- 
tory does not automatically solve the infinitely com- 
plex questions of Poland, Alsace-Lorraine, Istria, 
Dalmatia, Asia Minor, Bosnia and Herzegovina, 
Macedonia. Distribution of these by mere force will 
leave many injustices. 

It follows that there can be no conclusive peace 
that is not based upon internationalism and jus- 
tice. The peace that democrats should desire is not 
retributive, but preventive and curative, a peace 
not productive of future wars; a peace based pri- 
marily not on historical precedents, or historical 
claims, or the status quo ante, but on a reorganiza- 
tion and democratization of Europe and the world. 
It must be a peace that aims at the establishment 
and steady evolution of a new world allegiance and 
of a new democratic world society. It must be a 
constructive peace, a peace based on principle, not 
a mere patchwork. "We should desire a moderate 

sirable. Russia has now been divided into a group of new states, 
most of which, even if unannexed, will be under the influence of 
whatever groups rule Germany. If we are to have new wars after 
this war, a Germany, permitted to dismember Russia, would be 
equipped and fortified for these struggles as never before. The 
menace of 1914 would be increased ten-fold. 



222 THE END OF THE WAR 

peace permitting the future healthful development 
of all nations, our enemies included. We must base 
our peace, not on temporary, but on permanent eco- 
nomic processes. 1 

Only so can we hope to gain any measure of se- 
curity. It is not by victory alone, though a victory 
may or may not be essential, but by the fixing of 
just terms, that we make progress. We may drive 
the Germans back to the Rhine and still not be se- 
cure, and we may not completely defeat them and yet 
gain full security. A revolution in Germany would 
be more advantageous to our safety and to the 
progress of the world than a dozen Jenas. We can- 
not live for another generation under the old ten- 
sion from which this war came almost as a relief. 
We cannot for ever remain on our guard against a 
nervous, frightened and threatening Germany seek- 
ing to win away our allies, as we should be seeking 
to seduce hers. We do not desire an economic war 
after the War, which will be inevitable if the po- 
litical tension remains. Finally we do not wish to 
hand over Russia to the machinations of German 
imperialists, nor to create in that country a state 

i What made the victories of the North in the Civil War and of 
Great Britain in the Boer War conclusive was that the resulting 
peace and the legislation thereafter furnished a permanent base for 
the defeated peoples. As Mr. A. F. Whyte says, "Victory to be com- 
plete must be more than the defeat of the enemy. It must provide 
a foundation on which the security and peace of Europe can be built, 
for only then can we say that our ends have been secured." La 
Victoire Integrate, The New Europe, Vol. IV, September 6, 1917. 






A CONCLUSIVE PEACE 223 

of mind which will develop a Muscovite imperi- 
alism, determined to destroy the "effete and rot- 
ten" civilization of the West. All these possibil- 
ities, and many more, lie hidden in the old concep- 
tions of our international life. All these dangers 
are those which have come again and again in the 
history of the world, despite overwhelming " vic- 
tories" and innumerable reversions to the status 
quo. 

There can be no conclusive peace following a war 
based on greed and ending in aggrandizement. The 
only conclusive peace is a peace that concludes, a 
peace that foreshadows the end of an era, a peace 
that is in harmony, not only with the coming eco- 
nomic development of the world, but with the polit- 
ical aspirations of millions of men whose allegiance 
today transcends national boundaries and reaches 
out feebly towards an international loyalty. 



CHAPTER XII 

GUARANTEES 

All the nations now at war protest that they desire 
peace but all insist upon guarantees against a re- 
newal of the struggle. Germany demands security 
against any recurrence of what she calls the unpro- 
voked war against her; Great Britain, France and 
Russia demand like guarantees against Germany. 
Each group of belligerents wishes to bind over the 
other to keep the peace. 

This demand for specific guarantees appears and 
reappears in all official utterances. In the German 
Peace Note of December 12, 1916, neutrals are as- 
sured that "the propositions" which the Central 
Powers will bring forward "have for their object 
a guarantee of the existence, of the honour and lib- 
erty of evolution for their nations." The Allies, 
insists Lord Curzon, are fighting for "security that 
those [German] crimes shall not be repeated, and 
that those sacrifices shall not have been made in 
vain." The peace must "give guarantees for the 
future." "The war would be vain if we had no 
guarantees and securities against a repetition of 
Germany's offence." "Restitution, reparation, 
guarantee against repetition" is the phrase accepted 

224 



GUARANTEES 225 

by Lloyd George; "reparation for the past and 
security for the future" echoes Mr. Asquith. "We 
are fighting for peace now," says Mr. Bonar Law, 
"but we are also fighting for security for peace in 
the time to come." No peace is possible, says the 
Reply of the Allied Governments to Germany's Note, 
which is not calculated in some way to afford "ef- 
fective guarantees for the future security of the 
world. ' ' 

Undoubtedly guarantees in some form are nec- 
essary. To end the war without security to the 
belligerent nations is not to end it at all ; a peace that 
fails to give this sense of safety will soon be broken. 

There is much virtue, therefore, in this word 
"guarantee" and like all virtuous things it is 
dearly loved by diplomatists. But it is an ambig- 
uous word covering not only the most universal and 
most primitive desire of all nations, that of safety, 
but very much more. Under the demand for guar- 
antees lurk all sorts of gross, staring, brazen cupid- 
ities, the grinning hypocrisy of the predatory state, 
the sleek rapacity of acquisitive classes, to whom 
peace and war, international law and international 
discord are all "business." We must distinguish 
clearly among all these honest guarantees. 

As an illustration, consider again the German 
formula of December, 1916. This seeming virtuous 
manifesto demands a guarantee of existence, hon- 
our and "liberty of evolution," a perilously elastic 



226 THE END OF THE WAR 

phrase which may mean little or everything. Under 
this modest title deed Germany might logically claim 
all Europe, Asia and Africa as well as the Islands 
of the Sea. A guarantee of "liberty of evolution" 
is an oceanic phrase, a demand carte blanche. Sim- 
ilarly the guarantees demanded by the Allies are 
susceptible of an interpretation requiring many 
changes of frontiers and many acts of spoliation. 

The basic difficulty with these current demands is 
that the thing really desired is the relative weak- 
ening of the opponent. The nations seem to have 
lost all faith in treaties, conventions and solemn 
agreements to keep the peace. Disbelieving in all 
moral sanctions, they have reverted to the doctrine 
of self-help. Each believes that it must defend it- 
self by its own strength and that of its allies ; it must, 
therefore, be stronger than its foe. Its security 
must consist in a condition which renders its antag- 
onist insecure. 

All of which doctrine sounds both familiar and 
plausible. 

Yet if the war and the antecedent history of 
European diplomacy prove anything, they demon- 
strate that no lasting security lies in this process of 
debilitating the enemy. If we might follow the 
ancient policy of completely annihilating the foe, 
something might possibly be accomplished. Today, 
however, it would be repugnant to cultivated people 
to assassinate all men and women and all male and 



GUARANTEES 227 

female children of the hostile population. Yet short 
of such extermination nothing permanent is attained. 
The spirit of nationality, crushed to earth, arises 
with new vigour, and the weakened nation, gaining 
in resolution what it loses in material strength, be- 
comes the centre of new hostile coalitions. In our 
unstable and eternally transient European balance 
there is no such thing as permanent debilitation. 

Were the Allies to be completely successful and 
were they to seek to destroy the Central Powers, it 
would be possible to crush Germany and dismember 
Austria. But the national groups represented by 
these nations would remain and would form a po- 
tential centre of resistance. The very superiority 
in strength of the Allies would develop among them 
differences of policy on matters of secondary in- 
terest, while the insecurity of the Central Powers 
would lead to an enforced cohesion. The smaller 
group would create dissension in the larger, and 
in the end the unsteady balancing of equal coali- 
tions would be restored. The whole principle is 
vicious. A security gained at the expense of an 
opponent results in the insecurity of that opponent, 
which in turn makes the first nation insecure. In 
such arrangements no guarantee of peace can be 
found. 

In these matters we have been more fortunate in 
America. After this war Canada will lie exposed to 
attack by a nation of fully ten times its strength, and 



228 THE END OF THE WAR 

will be unable to resist. She will have no guaran- 
tees, in the sense in which that term is used in dip- 
lomatic negotiations. Nevertheless Canada will be 
unafraid, as she would be though our two nations 
stood alone in the world. She will know that the 
United States does not wish to attack her. She finds 
a greater security in our friendliness than in any 
possible defensive measures. 

It is of course not assumed that conditions in 
Europe are the same as in America or the relations 
between Bulgaria and Serbia, or France and Ger- 
many, identical with those between Canada and 
the United States. What is clear, however, is that 
not only does a weakening of one's neighbour not 
constitute a real guarantee against attack, but that 
such guarantees may conceivably be found by ways 
other than those approved upon the balance of 
power theory. 

Apart from the theory of guarantee by debilita- 
tion there are two methods by which it is sought to 
make a nation secure against attack. These are in- 
ternational in scope. They are the method of the 
covenant and the method of the destruction of mo- 
tive. 

Since the invasion of Belgium we have tended to 
regard all covenants between nations as of dubious 
value. If Germany could violate a treaty to which 
she had attached her signature, what reason have we 
for supposing that she, or any nation, would scru- 



GUAEANTEES 229 

pulously observe future obligations? Today there 
is no longer any supernatural sanction to the King's 
oath, and if he swear to his hurt, he will break his 
word. The history of diplomacy is filled with scraps 
of paper. Moreover a solemn treaty once broken 
is worse than if it had never been made. Had there 
been no guarantee of Belgian neutrality, France 
could better have defended her own frontier. 

Nevertheless, future treaties, agreements and 
covenants between nations are absolutely essential 
to the maintenance of a world civilization. If 
treaties have been broken in the past we must seek 
to arrange matters so that they shall be less likely 
to be broken hereafter. We must study the pathol- ' 
ogy of solemn treaties, discover the diseases of 
which they died, and seek by all means to prevent 
these diseases. 

That treaties have been violated in the past has 
been due to two main causes, the insecurity of the 
nation violating them, and the absence of a real 
international sanction. No nation can be secure un- 
less all nations are secure. Belgium was invaded 
and Holland, Switzerland, Denmark and Greece felt 
insecure, because Germany, France, Russia and 
England were insecure. Moreover, the treaties 
which have been violated might have been respected 
had they been more definite in their terms and more 
explicit in the penalties for their infraction. Had 
England and the United States, prior to 1914, def- 



230 THE END OF THE WAR 

initely agreed to declare war against any invader 
of Belgium, and had they in the past by force of 
arms maintained similar treaties, Germany might 
not have dared invade Belgium. 

The guarantees that we seek, therefore, must be 
secured in two ways — by making the cost of aggres- 
sion greater, and by making the temptation to be ag- 
gressive less. We may accomplish this in two ways, 
by international leagues to prevent aggression, and 
by a series of economic, political and socio-psycho- 
logical transformations changing the direction of 
thought of the nations. If we can secure conditions 
among nations analogous to those which prevent the 
United States from attacking Canada we shall have 
gone far in the direction of providing guarantees 
for all peoples. 

This policy of effecting economic changes making 
for peace may lead to startling results. It may, in 
given circumstances, prove desirable actually to rec- 
ompense the enemy instead of punishing him, just 
as we find jobs for convicted criminals, not as a re- 
ward for their crime but as a means of preventing 
their again being tempted. This method is not the 
same as that of buying off an antagonist, which, be- 
cause it places a premium on lawlessness becomes the 
worst guarantee of peace. The idea underlying the 
policy is that those nations are normally aggressive 
which do not find vent for their activities in peace- 
ful pursuits, and are therefore forced outwards. 



GUARANTEES 231 

The most effective prophylactic against crime, in- 
dividual or national, is prosperity and content. 

We have seen that a crushing of the enemy and 
still less his humiliation will not have the effect of 
guaranteeing the security of the victorious nations. , 
In only one way can that security be obtained, by 
strengthening international law (by providing it 
with a sanction) and by reversing the current of 
thought and changing the needs of the German peo- 
ple. If Germany has no more desire to attack her 
neighbours than the United States has of attacking 
Canada, France and Belgium need no better guar- 
antee. If, moreover, to this absence of motive there 
is added a series of treaties, underwritten by a 
League of Nations pledged to fight for their main- 
tenance, and securing France and Belgium against 
attack, the guarantee is as strong as it can be made. 
But this security of France and Belgium presup- 
poses that of all other nations, including Germany. 
It presupposes a new international organization, 
new international concepts, a new allegiance and an 
end to the anarchy between states which has existed 
for so many centuries. 



CHAPTER XIII 

THE GRAND ALLIANCE 

If we are to realize the ideal of an international or- 
ganization, such as that for which the liberals of 
America and other nations are striving, we may find 
in the present alliance opposed to Germany and in 
the economic and political concert which that alli- 
ance has been forced to adopt, an embryonic form, 
which in the years after the war may develop a rela- 
tively permanent and more or less complete unity. 

There have been other Grand Alliances, preten- 
tious and feeble, but being mere accumulations of 
soldiers, they have meant nothing. This Alliance is 
a totally new thing. It is a union, at least in aspira- 
tion, of peoples and not of kings. It is a coalition, 
economic and political, of states that had formerly 
lived an independent life. 

To gauge this Alliance properly we must look at 
it from a distance. There are innumerable seams 
and crevices in it and unlike things are joined incon- 
tinently instead of being fused. But these short- 
comings are inevitable. 1 The marvellous thing is 
that there should be an alliance at all. 

i "Napoleon was not so great as we all thought. After all he only 
fought coalitions." Premier Clemeneeau, quoted by Paul U. Kellogg, 
The Survey, New York, March 19, 1918 

232 



THE GRAND ALLIANCE 233 

An Alliance of a billion people — at least of a few 
hundred millions who rule a billion, extending its 
sway over twenty million square miles which is many 
times the maximum extent of the Roman Empire. 
Look at the map, as our German opponents insist, 
and we shall see that the territory belonging to it 
covers three-fourths the earth's land surface. Add 
to this other nations which are in sympathy and we 
almost literally have a world in arms, and, what is 
more important, a world in concert. We are wit- 
nessing a spectacle in which the most unlikely hu- 
man beings are in surprised co-operation. 

All this, if impermanent, is highly unimportant; 
its mere grandiose magnitude will not save the oc- 
currence from being episodical. But what if this 
gigantic coming together is the sign and seal of 
a New Order? What if we are witnessing the convo- 
cation of a vast kindergarten of Internationalism? 

If it is so, will not the event be the greatest in 
the War, greater even than the stupendous Russian 
Revolution? The war will then be remembered not 
by German ambitions nor by Hindenburg or Joffre 
victories but by the fact of this concert alone. 
We shall be at the beginning of a New Stage in His- 
tory. 

Let us, however, not be precipitate nor over-opti- 
mistic, judging these events in years and imagining 
that our Grand Alliance will immediately succeed 
in securing a permanent peace. We dare not expect 



234 THE END OF THE WAR 

a juggler's trick that will bring a newly painted, cast- 
iron international system out of the bag. What we 
must strive and hope for is something less palpable, 
a new allegiance to a slowly forming World Society. 
This new allegiance, at first unconscious, then con- 
scious, at first unwilling, then willing, will be a con- 
tinuation and fortification of habits of mind and 
action that spring out of the temporary needs of the 
present Alliance. A war that produces this — or even 
advances it in time — will have more than paid for 
its tremendous cost. 

The great hope then is that the ranging of the 
world against Germany has made possible a nearer 
approach to Internationalism. A union caused by 
temporary opposition may be made permanent. A 
union for defence and destruction may be used after 
the war for vast constructive purposes. 

The hope of a degree of permanency lies in the na- 
ture of the Alliance. It is more than a mere dip- 
lomatic union. Money, food and men have been 
held in common and an international organization, 
admittedly primitive and very defective, has been 
created in which all the nations have worked for one 
common aim. 

It is in some respects an astounding union. There 
has been a unification of classes within each nation 
as well as a unification of nations. There has been 
a merging of groups hitherto hostile and an attenua- 
tion of separating interests. Nothing before has 



THE GRAND ALLIANCE 235 

ever revealed so great a capacity of the infinitely di- 
vided nation to prove its essential unity. We had 
come to doubt the strength of this unity, cemented, 
and at the same time sharply limited, by the desire 
for individual gain. In the economic system of all 
great industrial nations men worked to feed, clothe 
and comfort other men they had never seen but 
each man worked for his own wages and his own 
profits. We did not recognize how tough and re- 
sistant were the loose fibres of this fragile organ- 
ism, in which, it seemed to us, half the people 
devoted their sedulous lives to obstructing con- 
scientiously the efforts of the other half. In all 
countries the Government was over-manned and un- 
der-minded. Class distinctions Avere strong and 
class prejudices bitter. And here out of this an- 
archic mass there appeared suddenly in the hour of 
threatened destruction and at its behest a startling 
unity. Not that the unity was complete. Very, 
very far from it. Even during the war countries like 
England and the United States suffered tremend- 
ously from their ingrained economic individualism. 
Yet there was at least some progress towards unifi- 
cation. 

For the first time each nation's full productive 
capacity stood revealed. It was like the sudden dis- 
covery of concealed faculties when other faculties 
are destroyed ; like the delicate sense of touch which 
comes to the blinded man. There was also revealed 



236 THE END OF THE WAR 

in all the nations the immense increase in power 
which has been slowly accreted during several gen- 
erations of popular education. 

What was true of the nation was also true, though, 
of course, to an even less extent, of the larger unit, 
the group of nations. Almost unconsciously there 
was formed, or revealed, a vague super-organization, 
a partial fellowship of nations united by the same 
sort of compulsions and attractions as those which 
cement a nation. As a result of new necessities 
states hitherto seemingly autonomous and self-cen- 
tred learned to co-ordinate and to sacrifice certain 
special national interests to the larger group inter- 
ests of the Alliance. 

This co-operation was partly military but above 
all economic. It was found necessary to apportion 
the shipping under the control of the Allied Powers 
to the needs of the several nations. England could 
not benefit by diverting shipping from Italy to her- 
self if as a result Italy's army was insufficiently 
supplied or the morale of her population menaced. 
It was necessary for the United States to export 
wheat and meat in order that the resistance of her 
Allies should not break down through actual hunger. 
In the same way coal was distributed as well as cop- 
per, iron, wool and other materials. 

All this has not yet been fully developed, and 
many inequalities remain. Certain of the Allied na- 
tions have suffered an excessive strain as the result 



THE GRAND ALLIANCE 237 

of an insufficient supply of commodities, of which in 
other Allied nations there has been a sufficiency or 
even an abundance. But the underlying theory is 
obvious. It was acknowledged in principle that the 
welfare of the group took precedence over that of 
any one nation and therefore that it had become es- 
sential to pool the supplies of all commodities nec- 
essary to the winning of the war. England no 
longer pursued an industrial or a commercial policy 
dictated by English needs alone, but subordinated 
her own interests to the larger economic and military 
necessities of all the Allies. The same was true in 
greater or less degree of the United States, France 
and Italy. Unless all the nations combating Ger- 
many could draw upon a common source the danger 
of defeat was imminent. 

This close co-operation of the Allies in times of 
war sharply accentuates a development which has 
long been in process, the loss by the several na- 
tions of their full economic independence. Before 
the war a country like Holland or Greece believed 
that it was self-sufficient, in the sense that it 
could get what it wanted and sell what it had for 
sale ; its custom was competed for by other nations. 
So accustomed were the Dutch and Greeks to the 
sight of foreign vessels thronging their ports and 
bringing them the produce of the world that they 
did not recognize the precariousness of this trade. 
The actual though concealed dependence of the na- 



238 THE END OF THE WAR 

tion, while recognized by economists, was for the 
mass of the people a vague and unreal thing. It 
did not affect a man's action today or tomorrow. 
The cord is now snapped and the economic inde- 
pendence of the nations, and not only of the small na- 
tions, is perceived to be gone. We are in an era of 
obvious and perilous interdependence. Even the 
strong state, though conscious of a greater strength 
than ever, has become easily vulnerable. It may die 
of a mere blockade. As in a military sense, so also 
economically a state can no longer stand alone. 
To stand alone is to be a shadow of a nation, an 
outcast from the close family of nations. 

At the present time all this is a curious revela- 
tion. For forty years there had been a definite or- 
ganization of industry along national lines, a promo- 
tion of the ''national economy" and a rapid national- 
ization of industry as of other phases of life. On 
the one hand we had protective tariffs, export boun- 
ties and transportation rebates in the interest of the 
home industry and at the expense of foreigners ; on 
the other a national competition for colonies and 
exclusive spheres of interest. We had witnessed an 
intensification of the national interest in industry, 
similar in kind (though vastly greater in extent) to 
that adopted in France two hundred years ago. 
What Colbert and the Mercantilists did in a small 
way, all nations were now doing on a vast scale. 
The result was that merchants and manufacturers 



THE GRAND ALLIANCE 239 

of different countries no longer competed as indi- 
viduals, but the whole industry of one nation com- 
bated the whole industry of another. It was the 
German steel industry as a unit against the French 
industry, not Schulz & Co. against the firm of 
Machaud or Le Brun. This nationalism of industry 
has by no means reached the limits of its develop- 
ment. It is still in its beginnings and in the future 
we may expect to see business in the various coun- 
tries organized on a far more closely co-ordinated 
national basis. The improvement of transportation, 
the wide extension of advertising, the increasing 
standardization of industries, the successes of trusts 
and cartels have put an end to industrial organiza- 
tion on a smaller scale. The increasing interest of 
states in the promotion of the economic welfare of 
their citizens renders the success of economic na- 
tionalism assured. 

While industry, however, has now compassed the 
nation it begins to stretch forth beyond the frontiers, 
and the same impulse which made it national is lead- 
ing it to become supra-national or international. It 
seems likely therefore that the growing economic 
nationalism will be infused with a super-nationalism 
as a result of the growing dependence of the nations 
and of their industrial systems upon one another. 
National economic warfare, like military warfare, is 
too dangerous a conflict to permit of its indefinite 
continuance. 



240 THE END OF THE WAR 

It may perhaps be urged that with the resumption 
of peace the economic self-sufficiency of nations will 
immediately return, and as a consequence the grand 
economic alliance of the Allied nations will suddenly 
cease. Actually, however, the conditions created 
during the war are likely to last at least for several 
years after the war. The withdrawal of millions of 
men from industry has caused an enormous reduc- 
tion in the available stocks of many important com- 
modities. There is not enough food in the world 
adequately to feed the world population. Nor is 
there enough copper, steel, coal, cotton and wool. 
There is a startling lack of essential raw materials. 
The available supplies can be distributed fairly only 
by a recognized international organization. 

Moreover, the power of any one nation to harm 
its neighbours economically by the withdrawal of 
raw materials is likely to be greater after the war 
than it has ever been before. If the United States 
and Great Britain refuse to export raw cotton, the 
textile industries of other countries will break down 
completely. The same would be true of wool and 
of several other commodities. For England and 
the United States, or either of them, however, to 
adopt such a selfish and monopolistic policy would 
be to alienate all other nations. In such circum- 
stances there could be no peace. The various Al- 
lied nations therefore will be obliged to pool all re- 
sources and distribute the product in proportion to 



THE GRAND ALLIANCE 241 

the estimated needs of the nations within the Alli- 
ance. For several years after the war Italy, France, 
England, the United States, as well as other nations, 
will probably receive such amounts of the food, tex- 
tiles and minerals of the world, at a fixed price and 
under agreed conditions, as shall be determined upon 
in the permanent international economic conference 
having the disposal of these materials. 

The economic co-operation of the present Grand 
Alliance is likely to become more definite and 
thorough owing to the fact that it will not only con- 
stitute an effective weapon against Germany during 
the war and, perhaps, a means of securing a just 
peace, but also, for some time after the war, a regu- 
lator of German trade and of German competition. 
Germany is beginning to recognize the enormous in- 
fluence of the economic factors in the decision of this 
war. In the beginning, she hoped for a speedy vic- 
tory which would lessen the economic strain. When 
that victory failed and when the British block- 
ade became more effective, the pressure increased 
painfully. With this increasing pressure came an 
enormously increased fear of an economic boycott. 
So long as the United States and Latin America re- 
mained out of the war, Germany had comparatively 
little to fear from such an attack, since she could 
always play off these great neutrals, with their re- 
sources in raw materials and their markets for fin- 
ished products, against her great European enemies. 



242 THE END OF THE WAR 

With the entrance of the United States, however, 
followed by that of China and Brazil, the situation 
changed for her alarmingly. It is this which ex- 
plains the emphasis which Germany has ever since 
laid upon the necessity of the Allies not using against 
her their economic weapons. 

The present situation is that if Germany fails to 
gain a complete military victory she can be compelled 
to accept reasonable terms by force of the enormous 
economic superiority of the Allies. The Central 
Empires have almost completely used up their sup- 
plies of raw material. Their factories, railroads 
and other instruments of production have been in- 
jured by the strain of a three-and-a-half years ' war. 
What they require is not alone the repair of the 
military machine and the storage of a surplus of 
goods for the future, but also a supply of commodi- 
ties for the satisfaction of their daily needs. They 
cannot secure all these goods except by drawing upon 
the Allies or upon countries completely or partially 
dominated by the Allies. 1 

It is impossible to exaggerate the urgency of this 
need. Unless Germany can make satisfactory treaty 
arrangements she cannot buy the goods she requires, 
and in return for those that she can buy, she must 
export gold, of which she has not enough today to 
maintain her paper currency. Failing to solve this 

i Since the dissolution of Russia and the signing of a separate 
peace with the Ukraine the situation of Germany in this respect 
has vastly improved. 



THE GRAND ALLIANCE 243 

problem, her export trade cannot be re-established, 
her wages will fall while her prices rise, and the 
resulting unemployment and discontent may bring 
the nation to the verge of revolution. Not to get raw 
materials means decivilization. As one writer has 
said: "The Germans have discovered by painful 
experience . . . that life in a community without an 
adequate supply of cotton, wool, silk, leather, and 
jute, of animal and vegetable fats, of lubricating oil, 
of tea, coffee, and cocoa, of copper, tin, nickel, and 
other even more indispensable metals, not to speak 
of foodstuffs, is so squalid and lowering as to be al- 
most unendurable." To obtain these materials Ger- 
many, unless she obtains her decisive military vic- 
tory, will be obliged to make concessions. 

And the chance of a real military decision becomes 
less every day. Even General von Freytag-Loring- 
hoven admits (in the Frankfurter Zeitung) that 
"the power of a radical decision of a world-war has 
slipped away from the armies and that the strategi- 
cal situation is conditioned by the world-economic 
situation." "It is owing to Germany's unfavour- 
able position in this regard," he continues, that "vic- 
tories which once would have been absolutely deci- 
sive, and the conquest of whole Kingdoms, have not 
brought us nearer to peace." 1 

It is quite possible therefore that the very element 

i See also "Deductions from the Great War" by Lieutenant-gen- 
eral Baron von Freytag-Loringhoven, New York, 1918, p. 10. 



244 THE END OF THE WAR 

which has created a partial economic unity among 
the Allies will be effective in establishing, at least 
temporarily, an internationalism broader than the 
present alliance. In all probability it will be the 
dread of a throttling by the Allied nations, and this 
dread alone, which will compel the Central Powers 
to accede to some measure of joint action with the 
present Allies. The economic weapon is likely to 
prove decisive. It is that which, aided by the mili- 
tary weapon, will enable the Allies to put enough 
pressure upon the German ruling classes and to ap- 
peal to the industrial and commercial classes of Ger- 
many, as well as to its proletariat, to bring the war 
to a reasonable end. 

That end cannot be a mere resumption of the eco- 
nomic war which preceded the war. 

What may eventually result we cannot yet foresee, 
but for a period of, let us say, at least five years, 
Germany will be able to receive her raw materials 
and her full access to foreign markets only on con- 
dition that she applies to her own industries the same 
rules and limitations as do the Allies. 

In return for such a reopening of trade, and for 
the resulting economic security, Germany may well 
be willing to accept a peace which she might other- 
wise reject. There is no advantage to her in holding 
territories if she cannot feed her people and can- 
not maintain their standard of living. 1 

i Today (March 9, 1918) Germany's situation in respect to her 



THE GEAND ALLIANCE 245 

It is also quite possible that the economic superi- 
ority of the world opposed to Germany will be a 
factor not only in ending the war, but in creating a 
new international system. 

Into this international system Germany would 
have to be admitted on equal terms. Not to admit 
her into the new economic league would be to make 
her an enemy and to force her again to resort to mili- 
tary action at the earliest advantageous moment. 
The Allies can afford to be generous even beyond the 
point of Germany's ability to extort terms. They 
will be wise if they see in their own temporary eco- 
nomic union the hope of a vast future international 
system which in the end will determine problems 
other than economic. For if the nations can learn 
to agree on the disposition of the available raw ma- 
terials of the world and on the opening of markets, 
they should also be able in time to agree upon the 
question of the distribution of trade and investment 
opportunities in all colonies old and new. If they 
can learn to agree on these subjects it should not 
be impossible for them to find some sort of an ap- 
proach to an understanding on such intricate inter- 
national questions as the freedom of the sea and 
rules for the regulation and limitation of armaments. 
If they can agree upon so complicated a question as 
the internationalization of the Straits, will it prove 

food and raw material supply has been vastly improved by arrange- 
ments with Russia, Rumania and the Ukraine. 



246 THE END OF THE WAR 

impossible to arrive at a satisfactory conclusion con- 
cerning the status of the Balkan States? The na- 
tions, temporarily at least, are forced to come to an 
arrangement concerning the distribution of the avail- 
able raw material in the world. It is a necessity 
which will be universally acknowledged. Will it be 
impossible to use this temporary and partial neces- 
sity for co-operative effort between the nations to 
form the beginnings of a new and larger co-ordina- 
tion, not only specifically economic, but also polit- 
ical? 

If this turns out to be the case, not immediately 
but in the course of years, the present Grand Alliance 
may be converted into a limited economic union of all 
the nations, and eventually into a new system of in- 
ternationalism in which there will be room for the 
gradual growth of an allegiance wider than the pres- 
ent allegiance to the state. 

What the present economic concert among the 
Allies offers is perhaps only a vague hope, only the 
beginning of a beginning of a really effective and 
plenary international system. The Alliance may not 
even outlast the war. It may show signs of inter- 
nal strain and its component states may revert to 
their former cut throat competition. The essential 
and encouraging element in the situation, however, 
is that we shall be faced after the war with a strong, 
though temporary, economic pressure, which is not 
unlikely to force states, enemy and allied, to act in 



THE GRAND ALLIANCE 247 

concert. Indeed this economic co-operation may be 
presented as one of the conditions of the treaty of 
peace. If these specific and transient problems can 
be solved temporarily, a basis will possibly be laid 
for a wider and more permanent international co-op- 
eration, such as President Wilson has in mind in his 
prophecies of a concert of the peoples. 



CHAPTER XIV 

OBSTACLES TO INTERNATIONALISM 

Nothing is more enticing than a large word which 
idealizes our ambitions and justifies our hopes. 
Once we discover this all-solving word we embrace 
it eagerly and never seek to ask whether to others i 
it means the same wide salvation as to us. If it un- 
locks our doors, if it opens our windows upon a 
glorious vista of liberty, we cannot conceive that 
it may not unlock all other doors and open all other 
windows. We assume a universal validity for any 
theory, premise or ideal which suits our circum- 
stances. 

In the past the nations have had many of these 
all-embracing words. Authority, Conformity, 
Faith, Liberty, Equality, Democracy, Nationalism 
— one after another these keywords came to the peo- 
ples and were adopted and fought for, though to 
some of the peoples they meant release and to others 
tears and chains. 

It is indeed when a word, phrase or slogan com- 
pletely epitomizes the desires of a nation or a class 
and arouses the greatest enthusiasm that it becomes 
most cruel. The noblest aspirations translate them- 
selves somewhere into misery and pain. There were 

248 






OBSTACLES TO INTERNATIONALISM 249 

no better intentioned men in the world than many 
who inspired the soul-saving Inquisition. The wars 
of religion were in part fought for high ideals, 
which seemed to the fighting nations of universal 
validity. The democratic crusade of the French 
Revolution, which sought to make the world ripe for 
democracy (and in the end contributed to that re- 
sult), brought to some peoples a useless and heavy 
burden. So too, the Holy Alliance was animated 
by a belief which seemed to the believers incontest- 
able and yet met opposition. In the middle of the 
Nineteenth Century many nations clamoured for 
an era of peace, but for others peace would have 
meant disaster, for it would have left their problems 
unsolved, their democracy depressed, and their peo- 
ple disunited. It was not because these ideals were 
bad that they bore so hardly upon certain peoples, 
but usually because they were envisaged too nar- 
rowly. Altruistic ideals were tinged with the self- 
ish interests of their protagonists. 

Today we are standing behind another world-em- 
bracing word, internationalism. In one sense it is 
a very old conception since its roots run far back into 
the past. But never before has this ideal seemed so 
near fruition, never before has it been so rich in con- 
tent, and never has it stirred so many millions to 
such depths. It is a noble and a generous ideal, a 
gracious conception of peoples big and little living 
together in harmony, each developing its separate 



250 THE END OF THE WAK 

abilities and characteristics, yet all united by a com- 
mon humanity. Above all, it is an ultimately prac- 
ticable ideal. 

Does this noble idea, however, in its usual in- 
terpretation, make for the freedom and full evolu- 
tion of all nations or does it benefit some and in- 
jure others? If it does injure some, can they be 
reconciled to or dragooned into internationalism? 
And if they are dragooned, does that fact impair 
the spirit of internationalism and defeat its pur- 
poses? 

There are many variants of internationalism. 
Under this one word are included plans, simple and 
complex, definite and indefinite, practicable, imprac- 
ticable, impossible, ranging from the first halting 
step toward a co-operation between states to whole- 
sale programs for wiping out all nations, and con- 
verting humanity into one inseparable people. Yet 
as we view this theory in the light of its interpreta- 
tion by the average thinker in Western Europe we 
find certain rather clearly defined elements. These 
are disarmament, international arbitration and 
mediation, the reinforcement of treaties, especially 
of treaties of neutralization, and finally the grant- 
ing of the right of self-determination to each con- 
scious nationality. While other elements are some- 
times comprised and sometimes excluded, these five 
constitute the core of international thought as de- 
veloped in the United States, England and France. 



OBSTACLES TO INTERNATIONALISM 251 

It is essentially this internationalism for which 
we believe that we are fighting. 

Unfortunately it is doubtful whether this form 
of internationalism is one which will be acceptable 
to our present enemies or to all of our allies. To 
our enemies it seems a cramping, one-sided, selfish 
proposal, not a cure for present-day evils but a 
sword, the hilt of which lies in the hands of the Allies 
while the blade points at the heart of the Central 
Powers. It seems to them a glittering mask, cov- 
ering the grim reality of a group of prosperous, self- 
ish nations seeking to injure others; a weapon, not 
a cure. 

What truth is there in this point of view? Are 
there interests in the world worthy of conservation 
which would be destroyed by any such application 
of internationalism? Why have Germany and Aus- 
tria so long antagonized the proposals of the West- 
ern democracies to replace an international anarchy 
with a responsible international government? 

The essence of this antagonism is to be seen in 
the clash between the State Idea (Staatsidee), as 
strikingly represented by Germany, and an Inter- 
nationalism represented by Germany's enemies. 
Month by month it becomes more apparent that Ger- 
man policies are closely associated with a new, or 
at least a newly emphasized conception of an omnip- 
otent state, largely free from international restraints 
and consideration for subject nationalities, and 



252 THE END OF THE WAR 

with the right to impress into its service the lives, 
goods and opinions of its subjects. As opposed to 
this conception stands that of Internationalism, 
which subordinates state policy to the larger inter- 
ests of the whole family of nations, which empha- 
sizes the right of nationalistic self-determination, 
and the desirability of peace. 

In democratic countries liberals have long believed 
that the ultimate triumph of this Internationalism 
was assured. All considerations of wisdom, justice 
and moderation, all the common sense and common 
morality of the world were to lead to an easy, al- 
most automatic, victory for the international prin- 
ciple. As peoples became educated, intelligent and 
free, they would recognize that the exacerbated na- 
tionalism of today was an absurdity. Men would 
see that they were brothers, that their interests 
were identical, that they could not strike blows with- 
out hitting themselves. Under the banner of In- 
ternationalism mankind would move steadily for- 
wards towards civilization, democracy and peace. 

For the moment at least the war has stripped us 
of this smiling illusion. It has revealed to us how 
for forty years one of the most powerful and in- 
telligent of nations, one which by most criteria must 
be adjudged highly civilized, has been wedded to 
an exactly opposite doctrine. Germany has devel- 
oped an allegiance to the state beyond anything 
known in modern times. This German state is a 



OBSTACLES TO INTERNATIONALISM 253 

jealous god, visiting the iniquities of the disloyal 
most heavily, and tolerating no other allegiance. 
The state is an end in itself, not a means to the 
happiness of its subjects. Its first law is not serv- 
ice but survival and power. 1 Therefore Interna- 
tional Law is valid only in so far as it lies within 
the interests of the state. Within the state minor 
nationalities, minor economic groups, minor organ- 
izations of all kinds possess only such rights as the 
state in its own interest chooses to accord, and rights 
so accorded may be withdrawn. The state is su- 
preme ; the individual within the state and the great 
inchoate world on the outside are subordinate. 

It was commonly believed that this formidable 
doctrine, the outcroppings of which we have dis- 
covered in recent grim events, was an anachronism, 
like the belief in witches, and that it must give way 
before the more modern conceptions of the demo- 
cratic nations. Yet this State Idea, or, as we may 
call it, this Neo-Nationalism, far from dying as a 
result of external intellectual pressure, has actually 
grown with the growth in literacy and education. 
The Germans today read more widely than in the 
idealistic period of Schiller and Kant, and they dis- 
cuss political questions, not always wisely perhaps 

i There is today a new type of German imperialist who would insist 
that the first law of the state is survival for service. German im- 
perialists of this type have absorbed much of the British imperialistic 
spirit, and men like liohrbach read occasionally like prosy transla- 
tions of Kipling. 



254 THE END OF THE WAR 

but interminably. And out of this discussion has 
come a fortification of Neo-Nationalism. Even the 
peasant on his five-acre farm, or the hod-carrier on 
a Berlin tenement is more or less in agreement with 
the current doctrine of a strong, highly organized, 
centralized state, for which an almost exclusive al- 
legiance may be demanded. He may perhaps ex- 
press the doctrine sentimentally; at bottom, how- 
ever, he vaguely believes in the sort of national and 
international organization in which his rulers be- 
lieve. 

At first glance the German socialists seem to form 
an exception. Despite their internationalism, how- 
ever, their conception of the state bears a certain 
likeness to that of the professors. Their co-opera- 
tive commonwealth reproduces much of the method, 
philosophy and morale of the German state. The 
Socialist party itself, despite its democratic basis, 
is unitary, centralized, all-powerful, and toward 
minorities not a little intolerant. It is regimented 
and over-disciplined. The trend of the German 
revolutionary and semi-revolutionary movement is 
not only national — in its decisive relations — but 
overwhelmingly political. 1 Her Socialists do not 
aim at a limitation of the immense authority of the 
state, let alone at its destruction, but at its conver- 

i Unlike France, Italy and the United States, Germany has little 
anti-political or syndicalist sentiment. 



OBSTACLES TO INTERNATIONALISM 255 

sion into a centralized, omnipotent, socialistic organ- 
ization. 

Nor has this weighty emphasis upon the state 
idea, this subordination of individuals, classes and 
interests to a unitary and internationally irrespon- 
sible state resulted in any decline in national effi- 
ciency. Bather it seems to have had the opposite 
effect. Both in peace and war Germany has been 
singularly successful. The tight national cohesion 
has not destroyed private initiative nor prevented 
a growth of effective group action. The German 
conception of the state has not been discredited by 
any marked inefficiency. 

What then will be the war's result in destroying 
or propagating this doctrine of Neo-Nationalism? 
Will Italy, Japan, Serbia, Boumania, and perhaps 
England, France and the United States embrace the 
doctrine which Germany has upheld? Will a feeble 
and languidly-aspiring Internationalism be wor- 
shipped in our studies while in actual life we go over 
to a strenuous and powerful, if narrow Neo-Nation- 
alism? It is conceivable that the war will end with 
a stronger assertion of the omnipotence and irre- 
sponsibility of the state, with a naked Neo-Nation- 
alism covering itself pro forma with a few inter- 
nationalist phrases. The New Nationalism may 
triumph even although its titular champions be de- 
feated. 



256 THE END OF THE WAR 

This is one of the deepest issues of the war. The 
outcome of this contest between the New National- 
ism, aggressive, and confident and an International- 
ism, as yet unsure of itself or its purpose, will vitally 
affect the coming generations. 

Historically these two opposed doctrines, Neo- 
Nationalism and Internationalism, are twin daugh- 
ters of a single development. Whether in any given 
case the one or the other has taken root has depended 
upon the conditions surrounding the community dur- 
ing the period in which it attained to nationhood. 

Of our present-day nations, England, France, 
Spain, Portugal and others, reached nationhood cen- 
turies ago, while Italy, Germany, Hungary, Serbia, 
Bulgaria and Roumania did not become independent 
full-fledged nations until recently. All these na- 
tions desire approximately the same things; a nu- 
merous homogeneous population permanently inhab- 
iting a coherent territory; a well-defined and easily 
defended frontier ; a population with a common lan- 
guage, literature and institutions ; a unitary govern- 
ment and an organic, intellectual and political 
solidarity; a population composed, if possible, of 
only one nationality. 1 If these elements are essen- 
tial to full nationhood, then France and Spain are 
nations in a fuller sense than Austria, Hungary or 

i See definition of nation by F. Lieber, "Fragments of Political 
Science on Nationalism and Internationalism," New York, 1868; 
quoted by Rrehbiel (Edward), "War and Society," New York, 
1916, p. 1. 



OBSTACLES TO INTERNATIONALISM 257 

Russia. The latter are impeded by conflicts between 
the state and the nationalities within their borders. 

What nationalities are is easier to sense than to 
define. Broadly speaking a nationality is "a race 
which possesses its own language, customs and cul- 
ture, and enough self-consciousness to preserve 
them" 1 even though it does not possess its own 
government, as does a nation. Serbia is a nation; 
the Serbs of Austria are only a nationality. Flem- 
ings, Walloons, Alsatians, Poles and Italian Swiss 
all form nationalities. In a nation comprised of 
various nationalities there is usually, but not always, 
an antagonism between the state and the national- 
istic spirit. The Roumanians of Hungary are not 
a loyal part of the Magyar state ; their sympathies 
are nationalistic and cross the boundary into 
Roumania. The same conditions exist everywhere 
in the more or less coherent states of Central and 
Eastern Europe. The resulting conflict between 
state and nationality is a grave danger to the peace 
of the world. 

This antagonism did not always exist. Two cen- 
turies ago the various language groups vegetated 
together harmoniously, because not sharply con- 
scious of their nationality. The state in those days 
was a loosely-integrated thing, amorphous and com- 
fortably inefficient. Czech and German, Hungarian 

1 "The War and Democracy," by J. Dover Wilson and others, Lon- 
don, 1915, p. 19. 



258 THE END OF THE WAR 

and Slovak lived under one distant Emperor, whom 
they never saw. There was not much more friction 
than today between the various national groups com- 
prised within the Roman Catholic Church. But all 
this comfortable co-habitation of dormant nationali- 
ties has been ended by a series of economic, political, 
social and psychological changes, which have oc- 
curred during the last few centuries. A new sense 
has been given to nationality and a new vigour to the 
nationalistic principle. 

The internal and external difficulties in which this 
growth of nationalistic ambitions has placed states 
composed of several nationalities are immensely in- 
creased by the fact that these groups are perma- 
nent, unabsorbable and almost impenetrable bodies. 
It is often asked why Germany cannot absorb its few 
Danes or Poles as we in America our millions of 
aliens. The answer is that in Europe these nation- 
alities are growing things, whereas what we in 
America have are but up-rooted fragments of na- 
tionalities, that cannot again take root. 

It is this conflict of growing nations with minor 
nationalities, either within or without their borders, 
that largely inclines such nations either towards 
the New Nationalism or towards Internationalism. 
Those nations whose extension strikes against small 
but stubborn nationalities incline to a policy of Neo- 
Nationalism, while those whose expansion is free 
tend on the whole to a policy of Internationalism. 



OBSTACLES TO INTERNATIONALISM 259 

The United States is a case of a nation freely 
developing without the restraint of hostile nationali- 
ties. The same freedom to expand without striking 
against a nationalistic opposition has also been true, 
though in a less degree, of Great Britain and of 
France. The Boer War was an apparent excep- 
tion to the rule. But the conquered Dutch burghers 
lay six thousand miles from London ; they were not 
in a vital part of the Empire ; and they could be ab- 
sorbed linguistically if not racially. On the other 
hand, the expansion of Germany and Austria-Hun- 
gary was halted on every side by small nationali- 
ties, within and without the Empires. The Dutch 
and Belgians hemmed in Germany on the west. In 
the south-east, Serbia stood solidly opposed, while 
within the Dual Monarchy, the Southern Slavs were 
large disaffected. The Central Empires could not 
make gains in Europe without trenching on the spirit 
of nationality. They could not even maintain their 
actual frontiers without violating the nationalistic 
principle. 1 

It is self-evident that nations so situated find it 
difficult under present conceptions of national strug- 
gle to subscribe to the doctrine of the self-deter- 
mination of nationalities. 2 To them, the principle 

i The problem for Germany would have been less difficult had she 
been able to expand colonially as freely as Britain and France. Un- 
fortunately for her she entered too late upon the colonial competition. 

2 It is obvious that Austria is willing to have the principle of self- 
determination applied in Russia but not in her own dominions. 



260 THE END OP THE WAR 

seems destructive. If it were to be rigorously ap- 
plied, Austria-Hungary would break to pieces, Swit- 
zerland would disappear, Germany would lose many 
of her subjects (perhaps advantageously), Britain 
might lose Ireland, and Ireland Ulster, and Ulster 
perhaps a part of its territory. Turkey would be 
pared down to a fragment of its present territory. 
Self-determination is a principle which we in the 
United States did not admit in the case of the South- 
ern Confederacy. We insisted that the seceding 
states should remain within the Union, whatever 
their desire or interests. So far as inclination went, 
• the Southern States were no more a part of the 
nation in 1861 than was Canada. 

Against this principle of self-determination the 
Austrians and Germans oppose a rival conception, 
the State Idea. It is upon this fundamental theory, 
that the state is a larger concept than nationality, 
that Austria-Hungary, Switzerland, and Belgium 
are built. 

Which of these two principles is to prevail? If 
the State Idea, then to a certain extent we suppress 
nationalities; if the Nationality Idea, then to an 
equal extent we dissolve states. 

The question is not one of mere logic. Behind 
the State Idea there lies a powerful economic pur- 
pose. The tendency of modern times is for the 
economic unit to grow until it transcends the bounds 
of nationality. 



OBSTACLES TO INTERNATIONALISM 261 

Herein lies the deep antagonism between the 
Mittel-Europa idea and the unrestricted recogni- 
tion of the rights of nationalities. Mittel-Europa 
contravenes many of the ideals of internationalism. 
It is based on the Staatsidee and is a political equiv- 
alent for a closed economic unity much larger than 
the nationality. Its principle is not only not inter- 
national but not even democratic. Actually Mittel- 
Europa would work out along the lines of a de- 
crease in parliamentarism. The greater part of the 
administration of this vast federation would be in 
the hands of experts, military, financial and eco- 
nomic, and the control which could be exerted by 
the legislative bodies of the several states composing 
the union would be slight indeed. A Bohemian 
legislature would not be permitted to veto a law, 
agreed upon by the experts of Mittel-Europa. Un- 
der such a system the subject nationalities would be 
still further dwarfed. 

Why then does Germany desire Mittel-Europa 
while the Allies want the self-determination of na- 
tionalities — or at least of certain nationalities? 
Fundamentally, the Germans by means of this fed- 
eration are seeking to secure for themselves what the 
Allies wish to secure by their internationalism, 
namely growth, extension and a political and eco- 
nomic security. The creation of a Mittel-Europa 
may or may not be a prelude to new German ag- 
gression. It may prove to be merely an effort to de- 



262 THE END OF THE WAR 

velop a state upon so large a basis that it will be 
economically self-supporting and politically without 
fear of attack. To the Germans this coalition seems 
the easiest and perhaps the only path to security. 
The forces, therefore, which cause men in the West- 
ern nations to demand internationalism make Ger- 
many and Austria sceptical of it and desirous of 
Mitt el- Ew opa. The same motives work on the two 
groups of nations variously, because their basic con- 
ditions are different. 

This different working out of similar motives 
causes the widest possible divergences and the 
strongest antagonisms. One of the obvious implica- 
tions of Neo-Nationalism is militarism. The theory 
of the subordination of minor racial groups to a 
theoretically omnipotent state might have some- 
thing to commend it if the state were always the 
true and equal representative of the constituent na- 
tionalities. As a rule, however, the formula is used 
as a cover for the suppression of one nationality 
by another. In Austria-Hungary the state is Ger- 
man-Magyar, and minor nationalities acquire at best 
a subordinate position or are ruthlessly exploited. 
To hold these minor nations down military power is 
necessary. 

For the same reasons the Neo-Nationalist states 
are likely to oppose other parts of a program of in- 
ternationalism. Being hemmed in by minor nation- 
alities, they can upset the status quo with which they 



OBSTACLES TO INTERNATIONALISM 263 

are dissatisfied only by force of arms. Therefore 
they usually oppose disarmament, which they be- 
lieve to be to their own disadvantage and to the ad- 
vantage of the favourably situated states. Similarly 
they oppose arbitration, since it would apply to 
problems, which to them are vital, the current public 
law of nations, which law, they feel, presses unduly 
hard upon them. They are against any interna- 
tional law, which is based upon the equal right of 
small nations, hemming in the growing nations. 
They believe that these small nations must always 
and inevitably become the allies and bulwarks of the 
larger homogeneous states. 1 

As opposed to these Neo-Nationalist states, the 
more favourably located states tend to be in favour 
of internationalism, public law and peace, because 
of the advantages to them of such a policy. 

They can usually afford peace, since they have 
what is desired and what the war-like, ill-placed na- 
tions lack. If these favourably placed nations fight 
at all, it is in outlying semicivilized districts against 
unorganized bodies of men, to whom the rules of 
civilization and internationalism need not apply. 

i To this Neo-Nationalism, also, there are many minor implications. 
Because of their careful military organization and their supposed 
need of repressing minor nationalities, especially if these are frag- 
ments or fringes of independent neighbouring states of like national- 
ity, neo-nationalist states are usually ruled by politically conserva- 
tive governing classes and are ruthless in diplomacy and war. The 
ruling nationality is as a rule more cohesive than in nations more 
favourably situated. 



264 THE END OF THE WAR 

They favour arbitration, because, in its usual in- 
terpretation, it is based on the principle of the status 
quo. They favour mediation because, being less 
military than their neighbours, they gain by delay. 
They favour peace because they (usually) gain in 
strength with each decade and are frequently, though 
not always, pre-eminent in the economic competition 
which goes on in time of peace. They want peace 
because Time is their ally. 

Above all they desire justice for oppressed na- 
tionalities. Not all oppressed nationalities but only, 
or at least chiefly, those in potentially hostile coun- 
tries. By thus agitating and fighting for the op- 
pressed nationalities under enemy rule they make 
for themselves new allies not only of these minor na- 
tionalistic groups but also of the adjoining nations 
to which by nationalistic claims these fragments 
belong. The enemies of Germany and Austria can 
always win the sympathies of the Poles, Danes, 
Serbs and Roumanians within those Empires. 

Like the well-placed and compactly organized 
states, so also the neutral and neutralized small 
states advocate the cause of internationalism. Bel- 
gium, Holland, Scandinavia and Switzerland have a 
vital interest in an internationalism which preserves 
them from attack. Even where they block the eco- 
nomic and political progress of the large constricted 
nations, internationalism renders them secure. 
Their neutralization, and their separate sovereignty, 



OBSTACLES TO INTERNATIONALISM 265 

are based upon international law and upon the sup- 
port of nations willing to fight for internationalism. 

From all of which it appears that international- 
ism, according to its interpretation, may be a weapon 
or a cure. It may be used by certain nations to bat- 
ter down others. It may conceal national greed and 
national aggression. 

To take a hypothetical and exaggerated case, what 
remedy under existing theories of international re- 
lations could a future democratic Germany have 
against a Belgium which in the fixing of its tariffs, 
practically shut out German goods from passage 
through her territory? Against such an injurious 
action Germany might not be able to reply except by 
a violation of Belgian neutrality, which would bring 
on a new war. Actually there is no danger in this 
specific case, since Belgium is more dependent eco- 
nomically upon Germany than Germany upon her. 
But the general problem none the less exists. Va- 
rious nations hold the road to the ocean, control of 
the seas, access to markets and raw materials, and 
they are able to exert pressure upon other nations by 
the threat of withdrawing conceded rights. An Aus- 
tria at Constantinople could levy tribute as could 
Greece at Salonica or Italy at Trieste. Under our 
present static conceptions of internationalism each 
nation might levy tribute at will. 

An internationalism which would permit such con- 
ditions is a barren and negative doctrine, holding 



266 THE END OF THE WAR 

forth no hope of justice or peace. It is a purely con- 
servative internationalism, a mere glorification of 
possession. It has no vitality since it is not flex- 
ible and easily adjusted to an ever-changing environ- 
ment. 

To secure a real internationalism we must go fur- 
ther. We must revolutionize conditions and con- 
cepts and secure an international machinery for the 
progressive adjustment of the ever-changing needs 
of all the nations. The war has again shown, what 
was manifest before, that the economic interests of 
the nations transcend boundary lines. 

Such a wider internationalism cannot consist of 
treaties alone. Even though we formulate new rules 
of international law and give to them a new sanction 
we shall have gone but part of the way. Nothing less 
is required than a complete revolution of our in- 
ternational life, a binding together by new bonds of 
all the peoples. Internationalism, moreover, must 
be more than a mere legal compact. The crucial 
defect of such compacts is that they are speedily 
destroyed by evasion if not by open breach. Back 
of whatever legal formulation is necessary must 
lie a support for the new system in the public opin- 
ion of the world. The international court may en- 
force as well as declare the law, but the enforcement 
must find approval with the vast majority of the 
peoples. Internationalism will evolve, moreover, 



OBSTACLES TO INTERNATIONALISM 267 

only as it develops side by side with new habits of 
thought. Its growth is an evolutionary process, re- 
flecting a similar growth in the minds of hundreds 
of millions of people. 

At this stage it is unnecessary to map out a plan 
for such internationalism. Plans are easy enough; 
a plan for common action by all nations could be 
formulated in a month if the will to lead an in- 
ternational life were present. The will, based on 
a common consciousness, is the important element. 

That consciousness will grow as a result of this 
war. In a very real sense the war has not only 
negated itself but has irreparably discredited the in- 
ternational anarchy out of which it sprang. It has 
shown that no hope of an ordered international life 
is to be found in a balancing of rival Powers. It 
has proved that no nation is secure without arma- 
ments and none is secure with them; that the ma- 
terial weapons, indispensable to safety and yet not 
providing safety, are themselves automatic, and 
often actually precipitate the wars they are intended 
to avert. The old system, it is now seen, is so 
barren of criteria, of sanctions, of safeguards, that 
arbitration becomes impossible, except in controver- 
sies which do not matter, and even mediation is prac- 
tically worthless, in an atmosphere of suspicion, 
especially since every delay in declaring war favours 
certain nations and handicaps others. There is no 



268 THE END OF THE WAR 

way out except forward to a plenary international- 
ism, giving security, both political and economic, to 
all nations. 

What exact forms that internationalism may ulti- 
mately take is of importance; what matters most, 
however, is its quality, intent and spirit. We want 
a true internationalism, adapted to the needs of all 
the nations, and not a German internationalism, or 
a British, French, Russian or American internation- 
alism. No pseudo-international system, giving se- 
curity and growth to one nation and denying them to 
others, is worth considering. All the nations must 
be accorded some opportunity to develop, and all 
must obtain political security and the chance of a 
free economic life. 

Nor may the internationalism which is to be 
achieved be founded in the main upon compulsion 
exerted upon the nations. We shall not by means of 
war be able to force states to enter into a permanent 
league and we may even discover at the close of 
the conflict that the forces which are in the end to 
establish internationalism are totally different from 
those that have been created by the war. Undoubt- 
edly some power of compelling members of any in- 
ternational league and of defending international 
rights against outsiders will probably prove neces- 
sary especially in the beginning, but in the last anal- 
ysis, the system must rest upon a willing consent of 
the peoples. Just as a democratic state, though pro- 



OBSTACLES TO INTERNATIONALISM 269 

tecting itself against anti-social classes, yet depends 
for its real power upon the voluntary adhesion of 
its citizens, so must any international organization 
rest upon a similar acquiescence. But to secure and 
maintain that consent the international organization 
dare not be conservative, static, unchanging. If it 
merely sanctifies the possession by certain nations 
of special national advantages, it will evoke an in- 
ternal opposition, by which in the end it will be de- 
stroyed. It can hold its own in a constantly chang- 
ing world society only by a continuous progressive 
evolution. It must change, as in a municipal so- 
ciety the law changes, moving forward constantly 
yet preserving continuity. 

On the economic side this new international or- 
der must grow with the increasing business inter- 
relation of the peoples of the world. The war has 
shown how complete is the economic interdepend- 
ence of the nations and how shadowy and incomplete 
is any political independence where economic inde- 
pendence is lacking. This economic interdependence 
of nations is rapidly becoming obvious. Despite 
proposals like that of Mittel-Europa and of an 
Economic Union Against Germany the trend of eco- 
nomic development is strongly towards a closer co- 
hesion, and even these projected economic super- 
states, although in intent mutually hostile, would be 
in large measure mutually dependent. 

Without such progress towards joint economic ac- 



270 THE END OF THE WAE 

tion and equal economic opportunity among the na- 
tions no internationalism is permanently possible. 
Many plans have been proposed looking towards 
such an increased community of interest between na- 
tions. If instead of returning her colonies to Ger- 
many, the Allies would constitute the whole of Cen- 
tral Africa as an international colony, to bo ruled 
by an international body and open on equal terms 
to Germans as well as to the citizens of other na- 
tions, we should have the beginnings of a joint eco- 
nomic action. The same principle might be applied 
to a part of Asiatic Turkey and to other colonies, 
old and new. A similar principle might also cover 
investments in countries like China. Similarly the 
question of economic rights of way for one nation 
over the territory of another might be amicably 
settled either by arrangements between the nations 
immediately affected or by international agreement. 
It would not be impossible to devise plans by which 
certain cities, like Trieste and Salonica, might be 
made free ports, whatever flag they flew, or by which 
Serbia could be assured of an access to the sea and 
Germany of an uninterrupted passage of her mer- 
chandise through Belgium and Holland. 

More and more the economic needs of the nations 
will demand the granting of rights which it is in the 
present power of other nations to refuse. Arrange- 
ments, rendered necessary by such demands, would 



OBSTACLES TO INTERNATIONALISM 271 

of course conflict with our present theories of ab- 
solute and uncontrolled national sovereignty. But 
that conception must vanish in any case if we are 
to secure any effective international organization. 

The time for this shrinking of sovereignty, for this 
creation of a larger loyalty, for the laying of the 
foundation of a new internationalism is now. With- 
out such an end the war will have been a fail- 
ure. There will be no true victory, for none will 
have gained anything except a return to the old in- 
security, the old injustice, the old fear and cruelty 
and bloodshed of the past. 

Yet we do not know and cannot surely know 
whether this victory is to be really won and inter- 
nationalism secured or whether the whole war has 
been nothing but a laboratory demonstration to 
prove the evils of the old system. We may discover 
at the Peace Conference that we are to be permitted 
only to secure a distant vision of internationalism, 
are to be permitted only to take a few short steps in 
that direction. We may even learn that war reveals 
rather than changes, and that we must look to long 
years of peace under evil conditions to evolve the 
forces which in the end are to give us a permanent 
peace and internationalism. If this proves to be 
the case we shall have won from the war only the 
chance to begin the struggle anew. But we should 
not accept this disheartening conclusion until it is 



272 THE END OF THE WAR 

forced upon us. Until the war ends and the Peace 
Conference is over we must carry on the conflict for 
democracy and internationalism with the same high 
spirit of confidence as that with which we entered 
the war. 



CHAPTER XV 

AT THE PEACE CONERENCE 

The war does not end when the last shot is fired 
but continues to be fought at the peace table in the 
same spirit as on the battle-field. Though the tone 
of the peace conference is different, its spirit is not 
unlike that of the physical war. There is a clash of 
interests, a politely embittered conflict. Even the 
weapons are identical. There is the same cold diplo- 
macy and, although actual violence is barred and the 
august plenipotentiaries are in no danger of bodily 
injury, there is the same reliance upon the power of 
armies and navies to effect a decision as during the 
actual war. 

For those who have the cause of internationalism 
at heart it is salutary to remember that wars have 
been won on the battle-field and lost at the peace 
table. In peace negotiations, as in war, it is the 
group that is entrenched and prepared that is the 
more likely to win. Tomorrow the same ambitions, 
the same points of view, the same inveterate interests 
that proved obstacles to a democratic settlement dur- 
ing the war will become obstacles to a satisfactory 
conclusion of the peace negotiations. The same op- 
positions will arise. Not only will the Central Pow- 
ers and the Allies be mutually opposed but the na- 

273 



274 THE END OF THE WAR 

tionalistic, imperialistic principle and the principle 
of internationalism as well. If internationalists are 
not to lose in the end whatever they may have gained 
by the war, they must come to the Peace Congress 
thoroughly prepared. 

Tomorrow that Peace Congress will meet. A few 
months or years will see their various Excellencies 
travelling by boat and train to some capital of Eu- 
rope, prepared to settle the acrid controversies of the 
war and decide in council room and lobby the fate 
of the world. There may be all sorts and kinds and 
varieties of Excellencies. For the most part, how- 
ever, unless the democratic elements in the various 
nations prevent, these peace representatives are 
likely to be of the approved diplomatic type, the 
aged, bemedalled, chilly, narrow and conservative 
Excellency, very gentlemanly, very astute, funda- 
mentally stupid. 

Visualize it. Here again, we may have the Berch- 
tolds, and Tiszas, and Cambons, and Greys, and 
Goschens, and Sasonofs, and Salandras, and Mil- 
ners, and Curzons, together with the small fry of 
Excellencies from little countries, who resemble 
their big brothers as the stiff little courts of the 
Eighteenth Century Germany resembled adored 
Versailles. These nimble intellects, which played 
and parried and thrust so perfectly and with such 
punctilio in the year while the Great "War was pre- 
paring — fiddled while the world was aflame — are to 



AT THE PEACE CONFERENCE 275 

meet again, and play and parry and thrust over the 
graves of ten million men. What will they have 
learned ? What will they have forgotten ! Whence 
will come the inspiration to these closed minds? 
Again we may hear from these lips the same old 
phrases of vested interests and vital rights and na- 
tional honour and guarantees and securities. Again 
they may argue and debate over " equitable consid- 
erations" and "proper indemnities." The ten mil- 
lion slain will be a pawn in the game, a something 
to trade with. It may prove to be the most gran- 
diose huckstering the world has ever seen. 

Will these gentlemen and noblemen be guided by 
the unique desire "to make the world safe for 
democracy"? They haven't the remotest concep- 
tion of what the words mean. Will their Excellen- 
cies, guided by a common inspiration, unanimously 
agree to work in harmony for a New Europe and a 
New World ? To attempt this would be beyond their 
imagination and powers, while to succeed would 
"spoil their addition." Or will each Excellency be 
fighting singly for all the possible and impossible 
interests of his own nation? Will he ask for more 
than he expects, conceding gracefully that to which 
he has no right the better to secure that to which 
he also has no right? Will there be friction and 
cross lines of interests between allies and a furious 
scrambling for spoils? Will internationalism be 
"shelved"? 



276 THE END OF THE WAR 

Surely whatever progress we are to make toward 
a better Europe and a better world will depend in 
some measure upon the character of these delegates. 
If they are to be the same mentally bewigged diplo- 
mats with whom the world is so painfully familiar, 
the course of negotiations will not diverge from what 
it has been in the past. There will be secret com- 
pacts, quiet coalitions between allies and enemies, 
the playing off of one group against another, a 
manoeuvring for position, an attempt to gain dubious 
ends by intrigue and manipulation. Let the Peace 
Congress run along lines parallel to those at Vienna 
or at Berlin and there will be little chance of a 
peace in the interests of a broad internationalism. 

Of this grave danger many liberals are aware. 
Consequently there is an insistent demand that the 
negotiations be public and that the whole world be 
taken into confidence. Much progress has lately 
been made toward such a public diplomacy. Lloyd 
George, Woodrow Wilson, Czernin, Hertling and 
Clemenceau, to say nothing of the Bolsheviki, have 
been shouting their peace terms, or what is often 
the same, their war threats, at the top of their lungs. 
It is a democratic diplomacy par excellence, a talk- 
ing to your opponent, not in a quiet room over a 
cup of black coffee, but openly and publicly through 
newspapers which reach hundreds of millions. 

To some extent similar results will be attained 
at the Conference. The journalists will outnumber 



AT THE PEACE CONFERENCE 277 

the diplomats, and their newspapers will carry much 
of the news and all of the rumours that breed so 
luxuriantly in such an atmosphere. Doubtless, if 
negotiations are continued long, popular interest will 
relax, especially in America. Nevertheless what is 
said at the public conferences, and much that is 
whispered in the lobbies, will become the common 
property of the world. The peoples will have some 
opportunity of expressing their opinions, although 
they may not always be able to secure the reliable 
information upon which a fair judgment must be 
based. 

In the end, however, it will be the plenipotentiaries 
who count. Once these representatives agree upon 
a peace, good or bad, it will be difficult for the 
democrats in the various countries to make their 
opposition effective, especially since the only alter- 
native to an unsatisfactory settlement will be a re- 
sumption of the war. It would therefore be desir- 
able, if possible, that these plenipotentiaries be 
chosen democratically and be truly representative of 
the peoples. 

It has been proposed that the delegates to the 
Peace Conference be elected in each country by the 
most popular branch of the national legislature 
upon a basis of proportional representation. If, 
for example, in any parliament two-fifths of the 
members are liberals, two-fifths conservatives and 
one-fifth socialists, then the delegates should be ap- 



278 THE END OF THE WAR 

pointed in the same proportion; two conservatives, 
two liberals and one socialist. These representa- 
tives might constitute the Second Chamber of the 
Peace Conference, with the right to reject any set- 
tlement reached by the smaller body of diplomats 
nominated by the executives. It has been suggested 
that the members of this Second Chamber might 
vote as individuals and not as national units, in 
order that the liberal and democratic elements in 
the various countries might coalesce, and thus pre- 
vent the drafting of a merely imperialistic treaty. 

Such a direct representation of the democracy, 
however, is hardly probable. The proposal that the 
legislative body elect representatives to a peace con- 
ference, is revolutionary, being in obvious conflict 
with all traditions of treaty-making. It would be 
urged against such a procedure that it violated na- 
tional constitutions and precedents, and that it 
would delay peace and perhaps render it unattain- 
able. Before such a group could be called together, 
the nations, large and small, powerful and weak, 
would have to agree upon a just basis of represen- 
tation, and the controversies over these prelimina- 
ries might be protracted for months. Germany and 
her allies would stubbornly object to any system 
which would permit the Allies to outvote them. In 
all likelihood the opposition of conservatives would 
be sufficient to obstruct and finally to nullify the 
proposal. The most that could probably be secured 



AT THE PEACE CONFERENCE 279 

would be the creation of an advisory body elected 
according to this method, a body with no veto power, 
but with a right to make representations to the dip- 
lomats and publicly to discuss all proposals. Even 
the election of such an advisory body, though it 
would meet with strong opposition, would be a long 
advance towards a democratic diplomacy. 

Moreover, the crucial problem is not one of demo- 
cratic forms but of organized democratic sentiment 
all over the world. To secure a peace based on in- 
ternationalism and to prevent the Conference from 
degenerating into a mere scramble for territories, a 
supreme vigilance is necessary. If we go into the 
Congress blindfolded, there will be a grave danger 
that the essential peace negotiations will be carried 
on secretly and without due consideration of the 
wishes of the majority of belligerents or of perma- 
nent world interests. 

Though it is not wise to borrow trouble, it would 
be folly to disregard possible and not wholly im- 
probable contingencies, which, if they occur may rob 
the peoples of all direct benefit from their sacrifices. 
When we remember how treaties have been made 
before and when we regard the types of men who 
are interested in making the same kind of treaty to- 
day, it ceases to appear impossible that the stately 
peace congress may prove to be a farce. The repre- 
sentatives of three or four strong nations may meet 
in secret conference and agree upon the essentials of 



280 THE END OF THE WAR 

peace while the delegates are noisily discussing un- 
important questions. At the open sessions we may 
listen to an interminable wrangling over minor de- 
tails, such as whether the Italian boundary shall 
run two miles to the east or west of a certain point, 
or a certain rocky isle shall belong to Austria or to 
Greece. We may hear inconsequent discussions, 
frivolous claims and trivial counterclaims, while the 
real work of dividing up the world is carried on by 
unseen gentlemen in a quiet room, with telephonic 
connections with their capitals. Under such an 
arrangement the Congress would have the speeches 
and the fireworks while the manipulators would gain 
the tangible benefits. Those familiar with the 
method in which our American presidential nominat- 
ing conventions were once handled will easily grasp 
the significance of a like control of the Peace Confer- 
ence. 

The improbability of such a lobby peace is dimin- 
ished by the fact of the large number of participants 
at the Congress and the multiplicity and baffling com- 
plexity of the problems. Fully twenty-three nations 
will be represented and many hundreds of claims will 
demand consideration. The conference will seethe 
with arguments, economic, political, strategic, ethno- 
logical, historical; arguments good, indifferent, 
utterly bad ; arguments backed up not only by logic 
but by the threat of armies and navies. There will 
be re-alignments within the alliances. Although 



AT THE PEACE CONFERENCE 281 

Ruritania is one of the Allies, she is likely, if her 
interests are opposed by France or Italy to grav- 
itate diplomatically towards Germany. Moreover, 
no single one of these hundreds of questions is iso- 
lated and independent of others. Each, according 
to the tradition of the Balance of Power, is united 
with all. 1 If you are to give certain territories to 
Bulgaria, the cession affects the interests of Greece 
and Roumania, the relations of Serbia to Italy, the 
claims of Italy to Turkish territory, and so ad 
infinitum. Each nation, if we assume such a na- 
tionalistic trend in the discussions, will demand com- 
pensation for any advantage accruing to a rival. 
How, on what principle, in what manner, by what 
method, can a few hundred irreconcilable and un- 
reasonable representatives of twenty greedy and an- 
tagonistic nations settle hundreds of diverse and 
bristling problems in open conference? The solu- 

i In his address to Congress on February 12, 1918, President 
Wilson strongly opposed any such concatenation or kiting of issues. 
He insists "that each part of the final settlement must be based 
upon the essential justice of that particular case," and that "every 
territorial settlement involved in this war must be made in the 
interest and for the benefit of the populations concerned, and not 
as a part of any mere adjustment or compromise of claims among 
rival States." But in actual practice these claims cannot be settled 
even to the approximate satisfaction of the nations, if each part of 
the settlement is based upon "the essential justice of that particular 
case." Forty years of discussion over the question of Alsace- Lor- 
raine have brought Germans and Frenchmen not a step nearer to 
agreement. What new argument will carry conviction today? Simi- 
larly a freely negotiating Roumania will never admit that she ought 
to give up the Dobrudja, unless Bessarabia is offered as an argu- 
ment. 



282 THE END OF THE WAR 

tion that will appeal to diplomats of the old type 
is obvious and it is the same solution that has always 
appealed. The conference will be the grand per- 
formance which will attract all eyes; the actual 
business will be off-stage. 

Even were this form of negotiations to be adopted 
it is not utterly impossible that the resulting peace 
might be dictated by a desire to end the old interna- 
tional anarchy and to advance toward international- 
ism. More probably, however, the resulting peace 
would in the main be imperialistic. It would be a 
peace worked out by men who had laid aside all 
recent prejudices. Englishmen, Frenchmen and 
Germans would meet on friendly terms and discuss 
problems of Realpolitik most concretely. They 
would not dilate upon Belgian atrocities nor declaim 
about democracy. They would deal with such ques- 
tions as, What is there to divide? What shares must 
we give to what powerful nations? Which of our 
enemies or allies must be sacrificed? How can we 
coat the pill? 

In such a conference the cards would lie on the 
table and there would be little necessity for pretence. 
These Realpolitiker would recognize strength where 
they see it, and would know how to treat strong 
states and how to treat weak states. Of course, an 
imperialistic or semi-imperialistic peace would be 
carefully veiled. To the internationalist at least a 
sop would be given. It would, however, be quite 



AT THE PEACE CONFERENCE 283 

possible to accept "in principle" a program of dis- 
armament without putting it into practice, and to 
make apparent concessions to arbitration and media- 
tion while really strengthening imperialistic prece- 
dents and creating a territorial status which would 
make all the specious approaches to internationalism 
a mere diplomatic camouflage, the old, old window- 
dressing in which simple souls delight. At bottom, 
however, there would under such an arrangement be 
small regard for sentimental considerations. A 
Realpolitiker can no more afford sentiment than a 
burglar or railroad wrecker. 

All this is speculation or at best a forecast of pos- 
sibilities, not prophecy. What we are dealing with 
is not an inevitable happening, but a possible con- 
tingency, against which we must, if we can, protect 
ourselves. Another danger, moreover, lies even 
nearer. Instead of the Peace Conference ending 
with a quiet little group of diplomatic surgeons cut- 
ting up the world carcase, this work may actually be 
completed before the Congress meets. A few diplo- 
mats may come together at some neutral capital and 
agree in advance upon the bases of peace. England 
and France went to Algecjras with a secret agree- 
ment in their pockets (an agreement violating the 
principles of the public treaty which they subse- 
quently signed). Is it inadmissible to fear that, un- 
less precautions are taken, certain great states may 
come to the coming conference with a like equip- 



284 THE END OF THE WAR 

ment? The rulers of these states may believe that 
they represent valuable interests which they will fear 
to place in hazard through the free play of idealistic 
impulses, which in any case they consider imprac- 
ticable and noxious. 

In the present state of the world and of the world 
alliances this danger of a secret peace prior to the 
meeting of the Congress is sufficiently imminent to 
warrant the utmost efforts at frustration. England, 
France and Italy will quite naturally fear to enter 
into a blind conference with the Central Alliance, the 
internal cohesion of which is greater than their own. 
If at the Peace Congress Germany could detach 
Italy, France, or any other powerful opponent, she 
might, by a threat to throw over the whole proceed- 
ings and return to a war status, force great conces- 
sions from all her former antagonists. She could 
play off one against the other. The Allies, there- 
fore, may well hesitate to enter upon negotiations un- 
less the general boundaries of all discussions and 
decisions are determined in advance. But if this 
must be done what is more tempting than to go 
further and agree in common, prior to the confer- 
ence, concerning the actual detailed terms of peace. 
Such a treaty, even if in part secret, would be suf- 
ficiently binding. It would be a treaty based not 
upon generalities and aspirations, but upon terri- 
torial changes, trade rights, economic privileges, and 
other concrete advantages. It would tend to be a 



1 



AT THE PEACE CONFERENCE 285 

peace of give and take, a giving to the strong and a 
taking from the weak. 

If such an imperialistic peace is made it will take 
place not because of the wickedness of individual 
men, but because, given the old standards, the line of 
least resistance runs in this direction. The funda- 
mental result of this war, the one over-riding event, 
has been the temporary dissolution of Russia. 
Poland, Finland, Lithuania, Courland and the 
Ukraine are falling away from the government at 
Petrograd, and the Ukrainians have gone so far as 
to declare their independence and sign a separate 
treaty with Germany. What was once the powerful 
unitary state, Russia, has now become a series of 
separate states, no one of which is strong enough 
to deal on equal terms with Germany, or resist her 
economic, financial, intellectual, political or military 
penetration. The situation thus created is in one 
respect similar to that established in the Eighteenth 
Century by the gradual paralysis of Poland. It was 
not alone the greed of Prussia, Russia and Austria 
that caused the successful partition of that unhappy 
land, but the fact that here in the east of Europe lay 
a great hulk of a state, ready to be seized. Russia 
today is in much the same situation; for the time 
being she is a derelict. The essential fact of the 
present problem, moreover, is that because of geo- 
graphical reasons the chief beneficiary of the Rus- 
sian collapse is likely to be Germany. In no way 



286 THE END OF THE WAR 

can England or France secure a share, (even if they 
wish) of this vast territory. While Austria-Hun- 
gary, Roumania, Turkey and Japan may gain certain 
advantages, territorial or other, the bulk of the gain 
seems likely to go to Germany. 

To secure the benefits from this dissolution of 
Russia no crude annexation is necessary. Germany 
by reason of her power and proximity should be 
able to penetrate Russia, secure a dominant eco- 
nomic position and a preponderatingly political in- 
fluence, and these, once secure, might gradually be 
strengthened. All rights necessary to assure this 
special position could be obtained under the guise of 
a pious adherence to the canons of democracy and 
internationalism. The full right of self-determina- 
tion might be granted to Poland, Lithuania and 
Courland and yet result in the establishment of 
German dominance, or even of patent German 
sovereignty. Under a hundred smiling disguises 
Russia might be turned over to German exploitation. 
In the same manner England might secure rights in 
Mesopotamia, Central Persia or Arabia (as a coun- 
terweight to German claims) without apparently vio- 
lating the principles for which British and American 
liberals are fighting. True, British imperialists 
might not relish this hard bargain, any more than 
would French and Italian imperialists. If, however, 
they found German imperialism unconquerable, they 
might conclude that it would be safer to permit Ger- 



AT THE PEACE CONFERENCE 287 

many to expand in a quarter where it would mean the 
least danger to them rather than to fight longer for 
an internationalism which they do not wish. More- 
over, to many imperialists in all countries the fear of 
revolution, which has been brought to the surface by 
this war, seems more menacing than that of a Ger- 
man imperialism with its eyes set towards the east. 
If such an imperialistic settlement were to be 
sprung suddenly upon the Peace Conference, or be 
revealed gradually during the negotiations, Ameri- 
can representatives, or indeed the United States as a 
nation, would be practically impotent to remedy the 
evil. It would be too late to interfere. So long as 
the two groups of nations stand opposed, whether at 
war or in a Peace Conference, the American influ- 
ence, because of our middle position and our relative 
disinterestedness, is powerful. By granting or with- 
holding our aid we can influence each group. If, 
however, the major nations agree upon a peace, how- 
ever unworthy, there is nothing for us to do except to 
pack our trunks and return to our homes. Our in- 
terposition in Europe is only necessary or possible 
when an irreconcilable conflict arises between embit- 
tered and approximately equal coalitions; when, on 
the other hand, these groups are of one mind they 
will naturally consider the making of any treaty as 
their business, not ours. We cannot force them to 
return to the struggle nor compel them to remain at 
enmity. If prior to the Peace Conference we have 



288 THE END OF THE WAR 

allowed such an agreement, secret or open, to be 
made, we shall be helpless before an imperialistic 
impulse backed up by the overwhelming force of 
the world. 

It would be almost equally difficult for the liberal 
elements of the Entente nations effectively to oppose 
such a fait accompli. Once the diplomats have 
agreed upon a peace, whatever its terms, a reversal 
of their action becomes almost impossible. Demo- 
crats in the several nations can make protests, can 
even ultimately punish their representatives. As- 
suming, however, that the imperialistic features of 
the treaty are not too flagrant, and that the nation's 
obvious material interests are not sacrificed, the 
resistance to the treaty is not likely to be formidable. 
While the war lasts democrats and liberals are in an 
excellent strategic position, since inclining to a mod- 
erate peace they must be won over to a vigorous con- 
duct of the war. If, at the close of the war, however, 
these democrats can offer no substitute for an unsat- 
isfactory treaty except an indefinite continuance of 
the conflict under adverse conditions, is it not prob- 
able that their opposition will be overborne? 

In favour of such an imperialistic peace many per- 
suasive appeals would be made. The peace would 
be described as the best attainable, as a real triumph 
for internationalism, or, at worst, as a necessary 
preliminary to an ultimate triumph. It would be 
argued that a peace of this nature is the best that we 



AT THE PEACE CONFERENCE 289 

may hope for in the present generation, since we are 
not yet ripe for a full internationalism. 

The argument might run somewhat as follows: 
Seventy years ago socialists in England, France and 
Germany were appealing to proletarians to unite in 
a struggle which would bring about the co-operative 
commonwealth. The great revolution was at hand. 
Yet we know now that the world was not ripe for 
socialism, and that an attempt to introduce the sys- 
tem prematurely would not only have ended in 
failure but would have delayed its ultimate advent. 
The factories of the world were then too small, the 
wage-earners too few and undisciplined ; the capital- 
istic development was only at its beginning and not, 
as was assumed, at its height. The world needed 
many decades of capitalism. 

Today, it will be argued, the task of creating at 
once a full international organization presents equal 
and similar difficulties. There are too many small 
states, too many unbridled nationalistic ambitions, 
too much economic and political backwardness. In- 
ternational co-ordination and co-operation are in 
their infancy. We have hardly begun to solve the 
problems of international economic adjustment. 
We have not yet learned how to create a larger eco- 
nomic unit without destroying political autonomy. 
Internationalism cannot be mado; it must grow. 
We have not yet even assembled all the elements out 
of which it must grow. 



290 THE END OF THE WAR 

It might further be argued that just as socialism 
required decades of capitalism to bring it to fruition, 
so internationalism may require that slow integra- 
tion of the world which we call imperialism. 
The unattached and unorganized raw material of 
the political world must first be grouped and crys- 
tallized about a few centres. It would be difficult to 
base internationalism upon the assent of a large 
and motley group of independent nations, some 
great and others small, some progressive and others 
reactionary, some advancing and some hopelessly 
backward, some well-ordered and others in a state 
of chronic revolution for profits. It would, on the 
other hand, be easy to base internationalism upon a 
few large federal units, the British Commonwealth, 
the American Commonwealth, a German Common- 
wealth, a Russian Commonwealth, each of which 
would act in concert with a number of nations, peo- 
ples or states, with which it had a more or less vol- 
untary union, and the interests of which it would be 
obliged to represent. Once the present nations of 
the world were united in a few large groups, interna- 
tionalism would grow automatically, not only from 
self-interest but also out of mutual relations of 
fear and respect between these well co-ordinated 
federal bodies, each of which represented a merg- 
ing and compromising of divergent interests. The 
analogy with the development of a socialized democ- 
racy is obvious. It would be far easier to create 



AT THE PEACE CONFERENCE 291 

a socialist industry by the merger of a dozen cartells 
than to create it out of innumerable small businesses 
operated by tens of thousands of short-sighted men. 

If this be true then the path of internationalism, 
according to this hypothetical argument, might run 
parallel for a part of the way with the gradual de- 
velopment of a higher form of imperialism. Accept- 
ing this premise, what valid objection could be urged 
against a German organization of the Ukraine and 
the Baltic Provinces or a British administration of 
Mesopotamia? Might not such an imperialistic 
peace lead to the gradual creation of a group of 
large federated world commonwealths, upon which 
internationalism would finally be built? 

Undoubtedly the world is not to go over immedi- 
ately to a full international system. But no serious 
thinker ever conceived of that possibility; we shall 
be satisfied with a far more tentative approach to 
that goal. It may also be admitted that a coales- 
cence of the present nations into large freely organ- 
ized groups might render peace and an eventual in- 
ternational world-system more probable. The real 
objection to an imperialistic settlement, however, is 
that the resulting coalescence is not free, but forced. 
It does not represent the will and probably would not 
protect the interests of the peoples annexed or incor- 
porated. Such an imperialistic peace would destroy 
the Russian Revolution, intensify the enmity be- 
tween Teuton and Slav and in the end create 



292 THE END OF THE WAR 

new wars. The defect of such a peace lies in its 
essential spirit. Fundamentally that spirit is the 
old inveterate desire for nationalistic gain, for na- 
tional prestige, for strategic advantage. It is the 
same old preference of the nation's interests to the 
interest of the world. It might be admitted that it 
would be better for Mesopotamia to be British than 
to remain Turkish, and for the Ukraine to be dom- 
inated by Germany than be ruled by the Czar. But 
that argument might equally well be made for most 
of the imperialistic extensions of the last fifty years. 
A far wiser solution presents itself for both these 
problems. We are approaching the time when the 
backward countries may be ruled, not in the in- 
terest of a single nation but in the common interest 
of all. It would be extremely bad if an extension 
of German rule in Russia meant a new suppression 
of vital nationalistic interests; it would be almost 
equally bad if Mesopotamia were made a private 
reserve for British capitalists. Even though we 
are not ready for a full internationalism, we may 
make rapid and above all steady progress in that 
direction. We shall not immediately after this war 
end all insecurity and all causes of friction between 
nations, but we may mitigate the evil and can at 
least lay the bases of internationalism. A peace 
that fails to make whatever progress is possible in 
this direction is no peace; a settlement that goes 
back to old precedents of conquest, of needless sup- 



AT THE PEACE CONFERENCE 293 

pression of nationalities, of a bartering over terri- 
tories, is a retrograde step, an incitement to new 
wars and a reversion to international anarchy. 

The time to prevent the danger, however, remote, 
of such an imperialistic peace is now. We can gain 
our ends only by uniting the liberal elements in all 
countries. If we wish to influence the action of 
British imperialists we must reinforce the great 
mass of British democratic sentiment, while that 
sentiment is at its strongest. If we are to prevent 
the dismemberment of Russia we must act by an ap- 
peal to British, French, Italian, and even German 
liberals, and by a generous recognition of the de- 
jected and seemingly abandoned democracy of 
Russia. 

Already there are evidences of American action in 
this direction. The speech of Mr. Lloyd George in 
January, 1918, was interpreted by certain critics as 
indicating an eventual willingness to consider the 
making of a treaty of peace with Germany at the ex- 
pense of Russia. Although this policy would meet 
with the determined opposition of all liberal ele- 
ments in Great Britain, it would not be deemed 
unworthy of consideration by British imperialists. 
The reference by President Wilson to Russia re- 
veals a position which is not capable of the same 
equivocal interpretation. Among other things Mr. 
Wilson demands "The evacuation of all Russian ter- 
ritory and such a settlement of all questions affect- 



294 THE END OF THE WAR 

ing Russia as will secure the best and freest co- 
operation of the other nations of the world in obtain- 
ing for her an unhampered and unembarrassed 
opportunity for the independent determination of 
her own political development and national policy 
and assure her of a sincere welcome into the society 
of free nations under institutions of her own choos- 
ing; and, more than a welcome, assistance also of 
every kind that she may need and may herself desire. 
The treatment accorded Russia by her sister nations 
in the months to come will be the acid test of their 
good-will, of their comprehension of her needs as 
distinguished from their own interests, and of their 
intelligent and unselfish sympathy." 1 

I have emphasized the danger of a possible imperi- 
alistic peace somewhat strongly, and have run the 
risk of appearing to scent peril where there may be 
none, because it would seem that our only chance of 
making the Peace Conference worthy of the immense 
sacrifices of this war, and of the splendid idealism 
with which it has been fought, lies in a union of all 
liberal elements in all nations prior to the meeting of 
the conference. The imperialists plan ahead; their 
"hole in the corner" treaties are prepared well in 
advance. They come to the table with the cards 
stacked against their opponents. Those who desire 

i In his handling of the problem of a Japanese intervention in 
Siberia and in his telegram to the Soviet (March 12, 1918) President 
Wilson made his position even clearer. 



AT THE PEACE CONFERENCE 295 

a democratic peace must also prepare. The Peace 
Conference, if it is not to be a mere repetition of the 
chicaneries of the past, must meet in an atmosphere 
of public discussion and of intolerance for all secrecy 
and deviousness. Important as is the form or struc- 
ture of the Peace Congress, important as is the 
method by which the delegates are to be elected, the 
crucial factor is the state of mind of the world when 
the Congress meets. In turn this depends upon the 
possibility of bringing intellectual and moral pres- 
sure to bear upon the several governments before the 
war comes to an end. 



CHAPTEE XVI 

AFTEE THE PEACE CONFERENCE 

After the Peace Conference there will remain a 
sense of frustration. However intelligent or well- 
intentioned the delegates, they cannot, from the na- 
ture of the case, find solutions for all the intricate 
economic, nationalistic and territorial problems 
which led to this war. The most that can be accom- 
plished will be the creation of a machinery of inter- 
national government. How that machinery will 
work will depend upon the spirit governing the na- 
tions after the war. 

The problem of attaining internationalism is not 
one of form but of substance and intent. Even 
should we secure general promises of disarmament, 
mediation, arbitration, and of a freedom of the seas 
in war, even should we begin to construct a league 
to enforce peace, the machinery would break down 
unless upheld by the pacific intentions of the nations. 
If several members of the League believed that their 
interests were being sacrificed, they would openly 
or covertly seek to ruin the international machinery. 
It is easy to destroy, to take advantage of technical 
points, to promise and not fulfil, to be unfair and 
allege unfairness in others. For any fundamental 

296 



AFTER THE PEACE CONFERENCE 297 

and permanent success of internationalism we must 
rely upon the good intentions of states, which per- 
ceive that their true interest no longer lies in a re- 
sumption of the old strife. 

Whether an effective internationalism is possible 
at all under the present economic and political 
regime in "Western lands is doubtful. It is true that 
even the greatest financiers find war and provoca- 
tions to war on the whole unprofitable. Even were 
all profit-seeking activities of a nation organized 
nationally, and were the interest of each nation in 
any specific quarrel intensified by the fact that the 
beneficiary was a small social class, there would 
still remain an advantage in the maintenance of 
peace. But the temptation to war in such circum- 
stances is enormous. If conditions within a country 
are such that the nation is forced to seek its ad- 
vantage in foreign economic adventures, and if the 
profits from those adventures accrue to a small co- 
hesive group, with vast political influence, the temp- 
tation to seek undue advantage over rivals is likely 
to lead the nation to the brink of war. Were each 
Frenchman or German to gain or lose only a few 
dollars as the result of an international decision, 
compromise would be more profitable than war. 
When, however, as in the past, the rights or priv- 
ileges contended for mean not a dollar or two to 
each citizen but hundreds of millions to either a 
French or a German syndicate, then patriotism 



298 THE END OF THE WAR 

flares up menacingly. The masses in each commun- 
ity have a smaller economic interest in the contro- 
versies leading to war, and have more to lose from 
war, than do the special economic groups which now 
control national decisions. 

This disequilibrium of our modern economic sys- 
tem constitutes the gravest menace to peace and will 
continue to be dangerous, whatever the machinery 
for international government. The fact that small 
economic groups possessing vast influence find their 
interest in striving for special advantages in back- 
ward countries, even at the risk of war, makes any 
progress toward internationalism under the existing 
system extremely difficult. Under any system, of 
course, many differences between nations can be 
obviated. Profit-sharing privileges can be pooled, 
and states can be prevented from taking toll upon 
the international highways. But at best the result- 
ing internationalism is insecure. If after the war 
each nation is to be controlled by the same groups 
and ideas as in July 1914, the divisive and war pro- 
voking economic interests will remain strong, and 
peace will be unstable. Imperialism will be in full 
tide. 

Moreover, and this is an important fact to Ameri- 
cans, the United States, which in the present war 
has been a champion of internationalism, is as likely 
to become imperialistic as are the other nations. 
After the war we too have a victory to win, over 






AFTER THE PEACE CONFERENCE 299 

ourselves. Unless we achieve that victory, here, at 
home, we may become an aggressive and imperialis- 
tic power, a menace to the nations, a foe to interna- 
tionalism, a nation against which other nations may 
league in order "to make the world safe for de- 
mocracy. ' ' 

It is difficult for Americans, with our subjective 
attitude toward ourselves, to realize that any such 
menace exists. We have always had the effortless 
virtue that inheres in a comfortable competence. 
Our foreign policy has been "a diplomacy de luxe," 
and we were not obliged, as were other nations, to 
fight hard for what we needed. We therefore came 
to believe, that by reason of our peculiarly pacific 
nature we were immune from imperialism. 

It was sheer self-delusion. Undoubtedly we have 
usually had what we wanted and our sense of na- 
tional security has made it seem unnecessary for us 
to fight for strategic positions. Nevertheless we 
have been gradually strengthening our strategic 
positions in the approved English, Russian and Ger- 
man manner. We have acquired Hawaii to protect 
our Western shores, the Canal Zone to permit the 
passage of our warships from Atlantic to Pacific, 
and finally, in order to maintain our supremacy in 
the Caribbean and to guard the Canal Zone, we have 
taken over Porto Rico, a few naval stations in Cuba, 
and the Danish West Indies, and have acquired a 
qua si-protectorate over Nicaragua, Hayti and Santo 



300 THE END OF THE WAR 

Domingo. We seem to be moving toward some form 
of domination, open or concealed, partial or com- 
plete, over all Caribbean countries. Moreover, while 
strengthening our defences, we have also begun to 
enter upon the phase of financial imperialism. W"e 
long refrained from this policy because we had no 
large surplus capital to export. W T e did not need 
to invest money in Brazil or China so long as there 
were opportunities in Oklahoma and New York. 
Our abstention, therefore, was the result of mere 
convenience, and represented a stage in our economic 
development in which our home industry absorbed 
our capital. Today we are coming into a new phase 
in which, unless we change conditions, we shall de- 
sire to take our part in a furious international strug- 
gle for spoils. 

The war has immensely increased this danger of 
an eventual American imperialism. We have ac- 
quired the military means, and are becoming one of 
the strongest and certainly the least assailable of 
countries. We have acquired a " stake" in the out- 
side world, for over-night we have become a capital- 
exporting country. The initiative and the main 
profits of this capital export fall to a relatively small 
class, largely controlling our economic, political and 
intellectual life. Will these men be less concerned 
with profitable chances in Russia, China and Latin 
America than in plans of internationalism? How- 
ever unimpeachable their intentions, will they recog- 



AFTER THE PEACE CONFERENCE 301 

nize a clear mandate for internationalism if it runs 
counter to anticipated gains? 

We must face this issue honestly. Never before 
have we been so likely to become a danger to our- 
selves and to the world. It is no man's fault nor 
even the nation's, but the inevitable result of our 
own economic development. Doubtless the process 
has been hastened by our entrance into the war, but 
had the change not come now it would have come in 
another ten or twenty years. 

If we become imperialistic we shall act much as do 
other imperialistic nations. Our financiers are es- 
sentially like those of Britain or Germany. True, 
Americans as a whole do not as yet desire the an- 
nexation of other lands (although not a few would 
like to "take" Mexico) but there are other ways of 
being imperialistic. There is a financial imperial- 
ism, which retains, after eviscerating, the native po- 
litical government, and which buys control of for- 
eign nations as it buys lands, mines or railroads. 
Our future imperialists (and it is only their actions 
which are in the future) may give rein to all their 
ambitions without hoisting the flag over a single 
islet. They can get what they want in ways seem- 
ingly innocuous. And in getting what they want 
they will be bolstered up by the arguments that have 
aided imperialism since the beginning. All the shin- 
ing moral panoply that has once been used can be 
used again. 



302 THE END OF THE WAR 

This means tension — and war. 

The point of conflict between the rival imperial- 
ists, of which we may be one, may be anywhere. A 
long slow conflict, for example, may break out ten 
years hence in Russia, Latin America, Africa or 
China. Such a struggle would not confine itself to 
economic weapons. If British, German, American 
and French capitalists are competing for strategic 
investments, a financial coalition is likely to lead to 
political coalitions in case these prospective in- 
vestors are able to involve their states. Naturally 
the issue will never appear as a naked struggle for 
economic advantage. When the financial dispute is 
brought to a head, the resulting war will be evoked 
upon high moral grounds. 

Such an American imperialism, though possible, 
and, perhaps, even probable, is not predestined. It 
will almost surely come to pass if we permit an in- 
creasing proportion of our national surplus to pass 
into the control of a few politically powerful men, 
and allow this surplus to fight its way into backward 
countries. But these conditions are not inevitable. 
It is possible on the contrary to accelerate the move- 
ment toward a greater social control of the national 
surplus and toward a deflection of that surplus into 
channels where there will be the least danger of pre- 
cipitating international conflicts. 

We cannot do this, however, without revolutionary 
changes in our whole economic system. 



AFTER THE PEACE CONFERENCE 303 

The war has revealed the feebleness of that sys- 
tem. At the outbreak of the war not only did we 
not possess economic democracy but we lacked even 
an economic unity. Industrially we were working 
at cross purposes and with only a small fraction of 
our real power. We were wasting energy in inter- 
nal friction. Conditions tolerable in peace became 
unendurable in a war against a resourceful enemy. 

Because of the proved defects of our system of 
production there is a greater likelihood of our at- 
taining an industrial reorganization tending to pre- 
vent our launching into a financial imperialism. 
The breakdown of the old system has been astonish- 
ingly rapid. First went the old unregulated play 
of supply and demand. We began to fear the 
vagaries of the market and were forced to regulate 
prices. Our system of private railroad manage- 
ment under conditions of forced competition proved 
utterly inadequate and we were obliged to pool our 
several railway systems and make a common use of 
our whole transportation machinery. By national- 
izing the railroads we probably added billions to the 
country's real wealth and hundreds of millions to its 
future annual product. 

What we have learned in war we shall hardly for- 
get in peace. We shall no longer be content with an 
industrial machine which is so ill-regulated that it 
loses its force in waste heat and develops little drive. 
We shall be obliged to retain conceptions and prac- 



304 THE END OF THE WAR 

tices acquired during the war. The new economic 
solidarity, once gained, can never again be surren- 
dered. 

For however the war ends we shall require the 
full use of our productive machinery. If no inter- 
national system is developed we shall be involved in 
new conflicts in which economic capacity and the 
possibility of immediate economic mobilization will 
be decisive factors. On the other hand, if we are 
fortunate enough to secure a stable international 
system guaranteeing peace, the economic competi- 
tion between nations will for a time at least remain. 
For our own progress and influence the best possi- 
ble utilization of our resources will be essential. 

The chief obstacle in the way of such improve- 
ment is the multiplicity of our conflicting economic 
interests due to our extreme solicitude for special 
privilege. We still hold sacred all rights to exploit 
and monopolize and we divert an immense share of 
the wealth and income of the nation to a small social 
class. Our trust movement, though it has proved 
itself superior to industrial anarchy, has led to a 
further accentuation of inequality and to a further 
increase in the power of financially privileged 
classes. Everywhere we find a stark insistence on 
special rights not only by the very wealthy but by 
men of moderate and even of small means. As a 
consequence, although our industrial plants are in- 
dividually effective, they are collectively ineffective. 



AFTER THE PEACE CONFERENCE 305 

There is no unifying concept to our economic system. 

More important, however, even than the question 
of our economic efficiency is that of regulating the 
flow of profits both within the nation and outward to 
foreign countries. If we permit an enormous ac- 
cumulation of wealth and profits to be deflected, as 
in the past, to a few small groups, we shall find that 
these groups, in control of billions of dollars, will 
force the country to undertake imperialistic proj- 
ects. Our financiers will discover that there is a 
much greater profit in foreign than in home invest- 
ments. The rise in our wages, the slackening of our 
immigration and the general movement toward a 
betterment of working conditions tend generally to 
reduce the rate of returns upon new home ventures, 
and therefore increase the tendency toward a forced 
export of capital, irrespective of the political conse- 
quences of such export. We are approaching a 
stage in our economic evolution similar to that which 
England reached some sixty years ago. And the 
impulse with us is likely to be equally strong and 
even more dangerous, for in the early days England 
stood alone as the purveyor of capital, whereas to- 
day we enter the imperialistic competition at a time 
when many nations strive desperately for their 
shares of the profits. 

It would not, of course, be wise, even were it pos- 
sible, to prohibit the export of capital. It is emi- 
nently proper that a certain portion of the surplus 



306 THE END OF THE WAR 



income of America and of Western Europe should 
go to backward countries where capital is more nec- 
essary. It should be the endeavour of the great in- 
dustrial nations, however, to regulate this outflow 
and seek to convert the present imperialistic scram- 
ble into an international imperialism, in which all 
investment in backward countries would be made on 
joint international account and under joint man- 
agement, with full consideration given to the needs, 
both economic and political, of the indigenous races. 
Though we must export a certain portion of our sur- 
plus capital, it will be disastrous if the expulsive 
force of our economic system should be so great as 
to cause an exaggeration of this tendency, an in- 
crease in its violence, and an enhanced liability to 
drive us into war. 

Our policy, therefore, should be in the direction of 
a deflection of wealth and income from special groups 
to the general community, an increase in the expendi- 
ture of national income upon the general welfare, 
and finally an extension of democratic control over 
industry and other phases of national life. The first 
object can be attained partly by taxation and partly 
by nationalization. By means of steeply graduated 
income, inheritance and excess profit taxes we may 
largely prevent the present perilous concentration of 
our national surplus. We should hesitate to reduce 
to any great extent the present high income and ex- 
cess profit taxes and we should supplement them 






AFTER THE PEACE CONFERENCE 307 

with heavy and sharply graduated inheritance taxes. 
Every form of unearned increment, whether from 
lands, mines or public service corporations, should 
be carefully scrutinized and as far as possible turned 
to public account. 

An equally effective method of diverting wealth 
and income to the general community is by means of 
the nationalization of industries. Not only should 
our railroads become national property, but also our 
coal, iron, gold, silver, copper and zinc mines. The 
government should progressively extend its power 
over all basic industries with the double intention of 
effecting unity and of securing profits. Under such 
a system of nationalization it would be possible to 
make vast expenditures upon purposes which do not 
now pay the financier, but which would be of incal- 
culable advantage to the community. We should 
act upon the principle that large quantities of capi- 
tal should not be exported until we can properly feed, 
clothe and house all our citizens and can give them 
education, recreation and all other essentials of a 
full and healthful life. In other words, we should 
take from the small ruling groups the control which 
they now possess over our national revenue. With- 
out destroying all private property and incentive to 
gain, without undermining individual initiative but 
by canalizing it, we should conduct our national busi- 
ness as though all this wealth belonged to the nation 
as a whole, as though all income were primarily for 



308 THE END OP THE WAR 

the common benefit. In other words, we should 
move toward an industrial and social democracy. 

No such democracy will, of course, be possible 
without at the same time furthering, and being fur- 
thered by, a political democracy. The entire pro- 
gram depends upon the ability of the masses of the 
community politically to control the social machin- 
ery and thus secure the national product. Such a 
democracy cannot be attained in our country by a 
mere struggle between the wage-earning proletariat 
and all who possess capital, since the latter consti- 
tute the majority of the people and the overwhelm- 
ingly preponderant group. It can be achieved only 
by the alignment of the great mass of non-favoured 
Americans against those who are the signal bene- 
ficiaries of our present industrial process. 

It is upon such a democracy, not only in America 
but in all countries possessing potential military 
power, that the hope of a true and permanent inter- 
nationalism must primarily rest. If we can divorce 
the economic advantages accruing to each nation 
from the special privileged groups who now chiefly 
monopolize them, we shall have at least a basis for 
an international concert. Doubtless many differ- 
ences in interest will continue to exist. The Ger- 
man people as a whole will be benefited or hindered 
by the same sort of international decisions as now 
benefit or hinder their capitalist classes. But the 
gain or loss will then be less and will be more equally 



AFTER THE PEACE CONFERENCE 309 

divided, and there will be more possibility of com- 
promise and of adjustment when the new spirit, 
which we seek to incorporate in the relations be- 
tween nations, will already be represented within 
the nations themselves. It will then be seen that 
while the economic interests of the peoples still di- 
verge, these differences are not sufficiently great to 
warrant the costly and dangerous expedient of war. 
There will be no special group financially interested, 
as at present, in stirring up national animosity, and 
there will be no groups at all who will gain by war 
although their country loses. The problem of secur- 
ing internationalism is not one of intelligence alone 
but also of good- will; it is not a problem of discov- 
ering intricate devices but of eliminating real differ- 
ences of interest. Since these conflicts of interest 
lie largely within the nations themselves in the form 
of internal mal-adjustments, the progress toward a 
democracy will of necessity be a progress toward 
internationalism. 

The war has proved that the present control of 
the great industrial nations by militaristic, bureau- 
cratic and financial groups is a complete and tragic 
failure. It has shown that in these classes the group 
interest so overweighs the national interest and so 
destroys any international interest as to preclude 
all far-sightedness and to make a true concert among 
the nations almost impossible. It was recently pre- 
dicted by Count Okuma, the experienced and far- 



310 THE END OF THE WAR 

sighted Japanese statesman, that the war would lead 
to the death of European civilization. According to 
the British Labour Party, "we can so far agree in 
this estimate as to recognize, in the present world 
catastrophe, if not the death, in Europe, of civiliza- 
tion itself, at any rate the culmination and collapse 
of a distinctive industrial civilization." 1 The reign 
of profiteering must cease ; otherwise Western civil- 
ization itself will come to an end. 

In the Reconstruction program, proposed for 
adoption by the British Labour Party, a document 
which has been described as "probably the most 
mature and carefully formulated program ever put 
forth by a responsible political party," the issue be- 
tween a full democracy on the one hand and national 
imperialism and war on the other is trenchantly 
stated. "If," it says, "we in Britain are to escape 
from the decay of civilization itself, which the Japa- 
nese statesman foresees, we must ensure that what 
is presently to be built up is a new social order, 
based not on fighting but on fraternity — not on the 
competitive struggle for the means of bare life, but 
on a deliberately planned co-operation in production 
and distribution for the benefit of all who participate 
by hand or by brain — not on the utmost possible 
inequality of riches, but on a systematic approach 

i Labor and the New Social Order. A Report on Reconstruction 
by the Sub-Committee of the British Labor Party. Published by 
tbe New Republic as a supplement, Vol. XIV, No. 172, February 16, 
1918. 



AFTER THE PEACE CONFERENCE 311 

towards a healthy equality of material circumstances 
for every person born into the world — not on an 
enforced dominion over subject nations, subject 
races, subject colonies, subject classes, or a subject 
sex, but, in industry as well as in government, on 
that equal freedom, that general consciousness of 
consent, and that widest possible participation in 
power, both economic and political, which is char- 
acteristic of democracy." 

The final war for democracy will begin after the 
war. It will be a wider conflict than that which now 
rages and the alignment will be by classes and inter- 
ests rather than by nations. It will be a war which 
will be waged until separate interests within each 
nation are completely extinguished. 



THE END 



INDEX 



Allies, diplomatic errors and ap- 
parently imperialistic purposes 
of, 2-3; opposition of Presi- 
dent Wilson to aims of. 3^; 
course that might have been 
taken with, by America, 4-6; 
hesitating diplomacy of Amer- 
ica concerning secret treaties 
of, 6-7 : dangers of a victory 
to, 25-26; a real moral victory 
endangered by war aims of, 
26-27; reasons for desire of 
America for victory of, 00; 
confessed nationalistic ambi- 
tions of, 98-99; both morale 
and military power of, weak- 
ened by engagements among 
themselves violative of inter- 
nationalism, 107 n; disposi- 
tion of conquered territories 
among, by terms of secret 
treaties, 115-120: specially ob- 
jectionable character of secret 
treaties among, 119-120; bar- 
gain made by Italy with, 127- 
12S; course pursued by, re- 
garding New Russia's appeal 
for peace without indemnities 
and annexations, 176-177. 

America, lost opportunities of, 
for declaration of principles 
in world conflict, 1-7; reasons 
to be found for course of, 7-8 ; 
diminution of moral value of 
participation of, in war, 8; 
false position occupied by, 8- 
9; discouraging effects of lack 
of courage of convictions by, 
9-10; chief hope of the world's 

313 



peace found in, 33-34; les- 
sons concerning peace learned 
by, 34-36; mood in which 
problem of world peace must 
be approached by, 37 ; ideals 
of people of, before and after 
entering war, 38; pacifists, 
patriots, and the policy of 
neutrality in, 38-49; reasons 
for conversion of, to war. 50 ff ; 
effect of modern growth of in- 
dustry upon entrance into 
war, 57-62; theory of respon- 
sibility of financial interests 
for war, 62-66; idealistic fac- 
tors influencing decision, 66- 
67; influence of Russian Revo- 
lution, 67-OS; obsolescent be- 
lief still prevalent that Amer- 
ica has little concern with Eu- 
rope, 68-70: war justified by 
appeal to old ideals of, 70- 
71; forced to admit menace of 
German militarism, 84-85; 
democratic ideal of, menaced 
by German autocracy and mili- 
tarism, 85-90; not bound by 
Italy's bargain with the Al- 
lies, 131-138; position of, as 
arbitrator between claims of 
her Allies and of her enemies, 
139 ff.; President Wilson's 
statement of peace terms, 
139-141; difference between 
position of, and that of Russia 
and British Labour Party, 
142; strategic position of, 143- 
145: necessity of going against 
will both of enemies and of 



314 



INDEX 



influential groups among Al- 
lies, 145; concrete policy to be 
followed by, 148-156; failure 
of, to respond to appeal of 
New Russia for a common 
peace and mutual forgiveness, 
180-181; the present the time 
for preventing an imperialistic 
settlement, 287-288; likely to 
become as imperialistic as 
other nations, 208-29!) ; steps 
taken by, on road to imperial- 
ism, 299-300; phase of finan- 
cial imperialism entered upon 
by, 300 ; danger of imperial- 
ism in, increased by the 
war, 300-301 ; revolutionary 
changes in whole economic sys- 
tem demanded, 302-304; so- 
licitude for special privilege 
in, 304-305 ; importance of 
regulation of flow of profits 
within the nation and outward 
to foreign countries, 305-308; 
the kind of democracy in, upon 
which hope of a true interna- 
tionalism rests, 308. 

Angell, Norman, quoted on curb- 
ing of foreign circulation of 
Liberal journals, 105-166. 

Arbitration and mediation, in- 
ternational, an element of in- 
ternationalism, 250. 

Asia Minor, proposed disposition 
of, among Allies, 116-117; 
Italian aspirations for col- 
onies in, 127-128; disposition 
of, under program of interna- 
tionalism, 270. 

Autocracy, principle of, ranged 
against democratic principle in 
present war, 13; significance 
to, of victory for Germany, 
14 ; special reasons for Amer- 
ica's combating German, 85- 
90; surprising power and vi- 



tality of, revealed by the war, 
88-89 ; expansiveness of, 89. 



Bainville. Jacques, "Italy and 
the War," quoted, 122; defence 
of narrow Italian policy by, 
130-131. 

Balkans, character of struggle 
between Austria and Russia 
for domination of, 105; Italian 
claims as an obstacle to peace 
arrangement on nationalistic 
lines in, 129-130. 

Bang, Dr. J. P. "Hurrah and 
Hallelujah" by, 200 n. 

Benevolent neutrality, America's 
period of, 55-56. 

Bitter-enders, efforts for an ideal 
peace frustrated by, 27; pres- 
ent attitude of, 29-30. 

Bolshevik government, respon- 
sibility of Allies for rise of, 
176-177; source of strength 
of, found in fact that it repre- 
sents working classes of the 
world, 182-183; significance of 
rise of, as a symptom of a 
world-wide revelation and a 
coming revolution, 184; mean- 
ing of Russian propaganda 
which has culminated in ac- 
tivities of, 184-185; mingled 
absurdities, excesses, and wis- 
dom of, 185-186; question of 
eventual success of, 186-188. 

Brailsford, H. N., quoted on ef- 
fect on America's position, of 
her entrance into the war, 139. 

British Labour Party, statement 
of liberal peace terms issued 
by, 142; culmination and col- 
lapse of European industrial 
civilization recognized by, 310; 
Reconstruction program pro- 
posed for adoption by, 310-311. 



INDEX 



315 



Callwell, Gen. C. E., on the Ger- 
mans, 193. 

Classes, struggle between, seen 
as the war beneath the war, 
184-185. 

Colonial possessions, disposition 
of, under program of interna- 
tionalism, 270. 

Convention of April 27, 1915, 
disposing of territory among 
Allied powers, 115. 

Croee. Benedetto, quoted on 
Italy's attitude in the war, 
122. 

Democracy, diminishing chances 
of settling war on basis of, 
2-3; attempt of America to 
fight for, while countenancing 
imperialistic aims, 8-9; only 
course open to, to break down 
German militarism, 11-13; 
principle of autocracy ranged 
against, in the war, 13; what 
victory by Germany would 
menn to, 14; victory for inter- 
nationalism and, the goal to be 
achieved, 15; recognized by 
America as a fundamental 
purpose in the war, 54; the 
force that caused America to 
take sides with the Allies, 
60; how German autocracy 
and militarism are a menace 
to American principle of, 85- 
90; like autocracy, is aggres- 
sive and intensely missionary, 
91 ; distinction between a so- 
cialized, and an inefficient and 
brutalized plutocracy, 94-95 ; 
the war beneath the war a war 
for, 1SS; final war for, to be- 
gin after the war, 311. 

Democratic. groups, common 
ground of feeling among, in 



different countries, 159-162; 
true American policy aims at 
union of all the, 163-164; dif- 
ficulty of uniting those of war- 
ring countries, 164-166; points 
that help in uniting, 166-167; 
sharp cleavage between mili- 
tarists and, found in all coun- 
tries, 16S-170; danger of too 
long delay by, in exercising in- 
fluence against an imperialis- 
tic peace, 288. 

Dernburg, Dr. Bernard, defence of 
German militarism by, 77-78. 

Disarmament, an element of in- 
ternationalism, 250. 

Economic interdependence of na- 
tions, 235-238. 

Economic system, menace to 
peace found in disequilibrium 
of modern, 298. 

Economic war after the war, un- 
advisability of, 111-112. 

Election of delegates to future 
Peace Conference proposed, 
277-279. 

England, Dr. Dernburg's com- 
parison of Germany and. 77- 
78; meaning to, of a complete 
German victory, 82-83; influ- 
ence of trade unions felt in, 
173. See Great Britain. 

Europeans, misconceptions of, 
concerning Americans and the 
American mind, 39-41. 

Excess profits taxes, mainte- 
nance of, after the war, 306- 
307. 

Exploiters and exploited, Bol- 
shevik conception of Avar be- 
tween, 184-185. 

Financial imperialism in Amer- 
ica, 300-301. 



316 



INDEX 



Financial interests, theory of re- 
sponsibility of, for America's 
entrance into the war, 62-67. 

Foreign policies of European 
powers in modern times, 101- 
105. 

France, nationalistic aims and 
demands of, early in war, 103; 
agreement between Great Brit- 
ain and Russia and, as to ter- 
ritorial acquisitions, 116-119; 
influence of labour groups felt 
in, 173. 

Freytag-Loringhoven, General 
von, "Deductions from the 
Great War" by, 243. 

German Minority Socialists, 
statement of principles and 
aims by, 157-158; hope for 
future found in protests of, 
202. 

Germany, causes leading to over- 
ruling of liberalism in, 11; 
militarism of, to be conquered 
only by creation of secure in- 
ternational system, 11-13; vic- 
tory by, would re-establish 
prestige of autocracy, 14; early 
hopes in, of a speedy victory, 
18-19; not the sole enemy of 
peace, 35; America's reasons 
for taking sides against, 60- 
62; discussion of the militar- 
ism of, against which war is 
being waged, 74 ff . ; results to 
Western Europe in case of vic- 
tory of, in first Western drive, 
81-83; foreign policy of, com- 
pared with that of other pow- 
ers, 104-105; impossibility of 
collecting indemnities from, 
110; policy of trade discrimi- 
nation against, ill advised, 
111-112; resemblance of Ital- 
ian program to that of, 134; 



sharp cleavage between demo- 
cratic group and militarists 
in, 169; question of possibility 
of distinguishing between peo- 
ple and government, 189 ff.; 
submissive and militaristic 
character of people, 197; sinis- 
ter change in population with 
early victories, 199-200; 
wherein hope lies for people of, 
201-202; signs of beginning of 
change of mood in, 202-203; 
possibilities for development 
of democracy in, 203-206; 
power of Grand Alliance over, 
through economic co-operation, 
241-244; should be admitted 
to new international system in 
which the war may result, 
245; the State Idea in, 251, 
252-254 ; probable domination 
of, in Russia, under an im- 
perialistic peace, 2S6-287. 

Gibbons, H. A., quoted on bully- 
ing and blundering record of 
European diplomacy, 103-104; 
quoted concerning Italian im- 
perialists, 130 n. 

Goldmann, N., defender of mili- 
tarism, quoted, 92-94. 

Grand Alliance, the, 232 ff. ; eco- 
nomic co-operation of. 234- 
241. 

Great Britain, material national- 
istic aims of, in the war, 103; 
agreement between France and 
Russia and, as to disposition 
of territorial acquisitions, 
116-119. 

Greece, offer of conquered terri- 
tory to (November, 1914), 116. 

Grumbach, S., anthology of Ger- 
man imperialistic literature 
by, 109. 

Guarantees, demand for, by the 
warring powers, 224-225 ; 






INDEX 



317 



necessity for, 225; distinguish- 
ing between honest and ques- 
tionable, 225-220; method of 
securing, by debilitating the 
enemy, 220-227 ; the method of 
the covenant and the method 
of destruction of motive, 228- 
230; should be secured by 
making cost of aggression 
greater and the temptation to 
be aggressive less, 230 ; new in- 
ternational organization and 
international spirit essential 
for enduring, 231. 

Harrison, Frederic, "The Mean- 
ing of War," quoted, 82-83. 

Idealism, American, before and 
after entering war, 38-4!). 

Imperialism, stamp of, upon Al- 
lied cause, 2-3; ideal victory 
imperilled by element of, 
among Allies, 26-27; discus- 
sion of aims of Allies based on 
ideas of, 08 ff . ; the demand for 
indemnities, 107-111; trade 
discrimination against Ger- 
many, 111-112; demands for 
new territorial possessions, 
113-120; of the Italian pro- 
gram, 121-138; possible ef- 
fect of labour groups upon, 
172-173; menace of, seen in 
America, 298-300. 

Imperialistic peace, the danger 
of an, 282-287; possible argu- 
ments in favour of, by oppo- 
nents of internationalism. 288- 
201; disastrous consequences 
of, 291-292; danger of, to be 
averted only by union of lib- 
eral elements in all nations 
prior 1o Peace Conference, 
294-295. 



Income taxes, continuation of, 
after the war, 300-307. 

Indemnities, the Allied de- 
mand for, 107-109; argument 
against, 109-111; impossibil- 
ity of collecting, from Ger- 
many. 110-111. 

Industry, neutrality impossible 
under modern conditions of, 
57-58. 

Internationalism, lost opportu- 
nities for settling war on basis 
of, 2-3; necessary characteris- 
tics of a policy aiming at, 7-8; 
the lessening chances of a 
peace based on, 9-10; the only 
means of ending menace of 
German militarism, 11-13; 
victory for, should be the goal 
to be achieved in the war, 15; 
question of the achievement of, 
by fighting, 22-24 ; danger of 
righting war for, by expedients 
opposed to, 26-27 ; doctrine of, 
viewed as a new and broader 
Americanism, 71-72; little at- 
tention paid to, in modern Eu- 
ropean politics, 103-104; mo- 
rale and military power of Al- 
lies weakened by engagements 
violative of, 107 n.; Italian im- 
perialistic designs opposed to 
policies of, 134; America's war 
aims inspired by, 139 ff; true 
alignment in the war found in 
militarism versus, 157-173; 
centre and core of, located in 
labour groups of different 
countries, 170-171 ; shown to 
be the only basis for a con- 
clusive peace, 212-222; a 
nearer approach to, made pos- 
sible by the grand alliance 
against Germany, 234 ; analy- 
sis of principal obstacles to, 
248 ff. ; question of acceptabil- 



318 



INDEX 



ity of, to our enemies or all of 
our allies, 251 ; antagonism 
to, in clash between the State 
Idea and an internationalism 
represented by Germany's 
enemies, 251; contest between 
State Jdea or New National- 
ism and, one of the deepest is- 
sues of the war, 256; condi- 
tions inclining nations toward 
New Nationalism or, 257-258; 
ideals of, contravened by Mit- 
tel-Europa idea, 261; narrow 
type of, favoured by favour- 
ably located states, 263-266; 
steps for securing a real, 266 
ff. ; program of, 268-269; the 
present the time for laying 
foundation of the new, 271; 
fate of, at the future Peace 
Conference, 275; supreme vig- 
ilance necessary to secure 
peace based on, 279; possible 
persuasive arguments against, 
at Peace Conference, 288-291; 
peace which makes no progress 
in direction of, a failure, 292- 
293; possibility of, doubtful 
under present economic and 
political regime, 297; basis for 
firm foundation for, in Amer- 
ica and other countries, 308- 
309. 
Italy, events leading to defeat of, 
in 1917, 3; bargaining attitude 
of, in the war, 54; selfish aims 
and motives of, 121 ff.; na- 
tional interest the controlling 
factor in policy of, 122-123; 
egoistic, nationalistic, and im- 
perialistic motives of, 124-128; 
bargain made by, with Allies, 
128; defence and criticism of 
national egoism of, 130-131 ; 
reasons why America should 
not lend aid to encouraging 



imperialistic aims of, 131— 
138; question of America's 
course in regard to, 152-154; 
weight of influence of labour 
groups in, 173. 

Japan, significance of invasion 
of Siberia by, to cause of Al- 
lies, 3; necessity for stopping 
plans for conquest in Siberia, 
to secure lasting peace, 13 ; 
slight significance of demo- 
cratic ideals to, 54; militaris- 
tic and autocratic character 
of, 76; Chinese territory ac- 
corded to, by secret treaties, 
115; position of, as affecting 
America's policy and war 
aims, 154-155; President Wil- 
son and the problem of inter- 
vention by, in Siberia, 294 n. 

Junkers, present ascendancy of, 
11; course to be followed to 
break down prestige of, 11-13. 

Kautsky, Karl, quoted on So- 
cialist attitude toward mili- 
tary system, 94 n. 

Labour, the necessity for placat- 
ing, 185. 

Labour groups, hope of inter- 
nationalism placed in, 1 70- 
172; reason for great influence 
of, in the war 172-173; pos- 
sibility of sweeping away im- 
perialistic elements by 173. 

League of Nations, for strength- 
ening guarantees, 231. 

League to Enforce Peace, pacific 
intentions of nations necessary 
to machinery of, 296. 

Lehmann, Pastor Walter, lauda- 
tion of Germany by. 200. 

Lieber, F., cited on definition of 
"nation," 256. 



INDEX 



319 



Liberalism, 
groups. 



See Democratic 



Maxse, L. J., attack on Amer- 
ica's neutral policy by, 46- 
47 ; quoted as an advocate of 
indemnities, 108. 

Militarism, destruction of all 
kinds of, one chief aim in the 
Avar, 15; what is meant by the 
war against, 73 ff. ; defence of 
German system, 77-78; par- 
ticular reasons why America 
combats German, 85-90; argu- 
ments in defence of German, 
92-94 ; not identical with 
maintenance of an army, 94 n. ; 
internationalism versus, the 
true alignment in the war, 
157-173; an obvious implica- 
tion of Neo-Nationalism, 262. 

Militarists, as a chief obstacle 
to an ideal peace, 27, 29-30; 
intellectual chasm between 
democratic groups and, in all 
countries, 168-170. 

Mittel-Europa, antagonistic to 
doctrine of unrestricted rights 
of nationalities, 261 ; why 
Germany desires a, 261-262, 

Money power, extent of respon- 
sibility of the, for America's 
entrance into the war, 62-67. 

Monroe Doctrine, to carry out 
promise of the, one object of 
America in entering the war, 
71. 

Murray, Sir Gilbert, "The. For- 
eign Policy of Sir Edward 
Grey," quoted, 101-102. 

Nationalistic ambitions of Al- 
lies, 98-106; internationalistic 
motive opposed to, 106-107; 
the demand for indemnities, 
107-111 ; the demand for trade 



discrimination against Ger- 
many, 111-112; the demand 
for new territorial possessions, 
I 13-120. 

Nationality, definition of a, 257. 
See Self-determination of na- 
tionalities. 

Nationalization of industries, de- 
sirability of, in America, 307- 
308. 

Neo-Nationalism doctrine of, 
253-254; question of effect of 
war on, 255; conditions inclin- 
ing nations toward interna- 
tionalism or, 237-258; mili- 
tarism an obvious implication 
of, 202; minor implications of, 
263 n. 

Neutrality, causes leading to 
American, early in war, 38- 
44; necessity of, emphasized 
by internal racial divisions in 
America, 44-46; difficulties of 
policy of, 46-47; failure of 
policy, 47-49; the period of 
"benevolent neutrality," 55- 
56; impossibility of a real, 
under modern industrial con- 
ditions, 57-58. 

Non-intervention. See Neutral- 
ity. 

Okuma, Count, death of Euro- 
pean civilization predicted by, 
309-310. 

Pacifists, as obstacles to an ideal 
peace, 27 ; the present condi- 
tion of, 27-29; reasons for 
existence of, in America, 38- 
42; condescendingly benevolent 
character of American type, 
42-43. 

Patriotism, pacific character of 
American, 42. 

Peace, the search for, and ob- 



320 



INDEX 



stacles to, 27-32; need of a 
constructive, 32-33 ; position 
of America as the chief hope 
of, 33-34; lessons learned by 
America concerning a real, 
34-36 ; not brought by the 
end of the war alone, 3(1-37 ; 
mood in which America must 
approach problem of, 37; 
terms of, as outlined by Presi- 
dent Wilson, 140-141; the 
means of attaining a conclu- 
sive, 207-223. See also Im- 
perialistic peace. 

Peace Conference, supposititious 
activities of diplomats at fu- 
ture meeting of, 273 ff. ; will 
internationalism be shelved 
at? 275; importance of char- 
acter of delegates to, 276; de- 
mand for public and not secret 
diplomacy at, 276-277; elec- 
tion of delegates to, proposed, 
277-279; supreme vigilance 
necessary to secure peace based 
on internationalism, 270; con- 
tingencies which may rob peo- 
ple of benefit of their sacri- 
fices, 279-282; the danger of 
an imperialistic peace, 282- 
287 ; America's present oppor- 
tunity to prevent an imperial- 
istic settlement, 287-28S; pos- 
sible appeals in favour of an 
imperialistic peace, 288-291 ; 
importance of union of liberal 
elements in all nations, prior 
to, 294-295. 

Piehon, Stephen, a French advo- 
cate of indemnities, 108-109. 

Powers, H. H . "America among 
the Nations," quoted, 75 n. 

Punitive indemnities, the pro- 
posed policy of, to be adopted 
by Allies, 107-109: the argu- 
ment against. 109-111. 



Railroads, benefits from nation- 
alizing of, 303. 

Reel us, Onesime, policy of in- 
demnities advocated by, 10!). 

Reichstag Majority program, 
202. 

Reinforcement of treaties, an 
element of internationalism, 
250. 

Reply to the Pope, President 
Wilson's, 140. 

Roosevelt, Theodore, criticism of 
views of, expressed in speech 
calling for a peace of over- 
whelming victory, 207-208. 

Roumania, a bargainer in the 
war, 54 ; territories to be ac- 
corded to, 115-116. 

Russia, course of Allies toward, 
2-3; conditions residting in 
handing over of, to Germany, 
9; autocratic and militaristic 
character of, in 1914, 76; mili- 
tarism of, compared with that 
of Germany, 77; nationalistic 
aims of Imperial, at beginning 
of war, 102-103; territory ac- 
corded to, by terms of secret 
treaties, 115; territorial ac- 
quisitions of. under agreement 
with Great Britain and France, 
116-119; impulse toward lib- 
eral peace terms from Repub- 
lic of, 142; appeal issued by 
Republic of, for peace with 
out punitive indemnities or 
forced annexations, 174; effects 
of utterance on allies of New 
Russia, 174-175; wisdom of 
new-born Republic shown by 
statement, 175; President 
Wilson's sympathetic attitude, 
170: procrastinating course of 
Allies, resulting in rise of Bol- 
shevik government, 176-177; 
war-weariness and clear-sight- 



INDEX 



321 



edncss of, 177-179; steps load- 
ing to the appeal by, for a com- 
mon peace and mutual forgive- 
ness, 179— ISO ; disposition of, 
under an imperialistic peace, 
285-2S7; President Wil- 
son's announcement concerning 
treatment of, by sister nations, 
293-294. 

Russian Republic, right spirit 
shown in declaration by, for 
"no annexations and no in- 
demnities," 5, 174-175; at- 
titude of, toward secret com- 
pacts of Allies, (i-7 

Russian Revolution, effect of, on 
deciding America to enter the 
war, G7-68 ; destruction of, by 
an imperialistic peace, 291. 



Saturday Review, reception by, 
of President Wilson's demand 
for democratization in Ger- 
many and promise of a non- 
punitive peace, 162-163. 

Sayce, Professor, quoted on the 
Germans, 192. 

Secret treaties of Allies, to be 
disapproved by America, 4-5; 
hesitating diplomacy of Amer- 
ica in regard to, 6-7 ; effect of, 
upon the enemy, 99; disposi- 
tion of territorial possessions 
under terms of, 113-120; 
specially objectionable fea- 
tures of, 119-120. 

Self-determination, granting of 
right of, to each conscious na- 
tionality, an element of in- 
ternationalism, 250. 

Self-determination of national- 
ities, nations which find it dif- 
ficult to subscribe to doctrine 
of, 259-260; effect upon Aus- 
tria-Hungary, Switzerland. 



Great Britain, and other coun- 
tries, 260; the State Idea op- 
posed as a rival conception, 
200. 

Shaw, Bernard, quoted on im- 
possibility of collecting dam- 
ayes from Germany, 110. 

Socialized democracy, the brand 
of democracy for reorganizing 
the world after the war, 94- 
95. 

State Idea, the, as represented 
by Germany, 251, 252-254; re- 
lation of German socialism to, 
254-255 ; question whether 
war will result in destroying 
or propagating the, 255; con- 
test between internationalism 
and, one of the deep issues of 
the war, 256; opposed as a 
rival conception to doctrine of 
self determination of nation- 
alities, 260. 

Status quo ante, impossibility of 
ending war on basis of, 215- 
220. 

Stockholm Conference, a lost op- 
portunity for America, 5-6. 

Stoddard, T. Lathrop. "Present- 
Day Europe," quoted, 128. 

Taxes on incomes, inheritances, 
and excess profits, as a means 
of deflecting wealth to general 
community, 306-307. 

Territorial possessions, Allied 
demands for. as an obstacle to 
peace, 113-120 

Threats, Germany's use of, to se- 
cure concessions, 80. 

Trade discrimination, discussion 
of the Allied demand for, af- 
ter the war, 111-112. 

Trade unions. See Labour 
groups. 

Treaties, reinforcement of, an 



322 



INDEX 



element of internationalism, 
250. See Secret treaties. 
Turner, Sir Alfred E., quoted on 
the. Germans, 192. 

Veblen, Thorstein, "The Nature 
of Peace," quoted, 203. 

Victory, present elusiveness of, 
17-19; in what it will really 
consist, 20-22 ; elusiveness 
even of a real moral, 22-24; 
dangers lurking in a merely 
material, 24-20; reasons for 
elusiveness of a real, found in 
war aims of Allies, 26-27; ob- 
stacles to an ideal, found in 
both pacifists and militarists, 
27-30; the need for a construc- 
tive peace to follow, 32-33; 
criticism of Mr. Roosevelt's 
call for an overwhelming, 207- 
20S; a conclusive peace not 
necessarily the result of a con- 
clusive victory, 209-212. 

Vorwiirts, reception by, of Presi- 
dent Wilson's demand for 
democratization in Germany 
and promise of a non-punitive 
peace, 162. 

Wage-earners, promotion of in- 
ternationalism by, 170-172; 
great influence of, in the war, 
due to law of supply and de- 
mand, 172-173; imperialistic 
elements may be swept away 
by, 173; strength of Bolsheviki 
found in fact that they repre- 
sent the, 1S2-183. 

Wallas, Graham, early forecast 
of present situation by, 17-18. 

Wall Street and the war, 62-67. 

War against militarism, mean- 
ing of the, 73-97. 

War beneath the war, meaning 
of phrase, 14, 184. 



Whyte, A F., quoted on the 
basis of a complete victory, 
222 n. 

Wilson, President, efforts of, to 
secure for America position of 
arbiter in settlement of war, 
1-2; opposition of, to imper- 
ialistic designs of Allies, 3; 
reasons for failure of, to hit 
his mark, 3-4; course that 
might have been followed by, 
4-5; lost opportunities of, for 
declaration of principles, 5-7; 
possible explanations of policy 
and apparent errors of, 7-8; 
the thought behind the "too 
proud to fight" speech, 44; the 
plea by, that Americans re- 
main neutral in thought, 55; 
demonstrated unwillingness of, 
to permit financial groups to 
dictate national policy, 66- 
67; significance of war mes- 
sage of, in relation to uphold- 
ing of America's traditions, 
70-71 ; steps taken by, toward 
acting as arbitrator between 
claims of Allies and of ene- 
mies, 139-140; principles 
enunciated in his Reply to the 
Pope, 140; terms of peace as 
further outlined by, 140-141; 
reception in Germany and in 
England of demand for democ- 
ratization and promise of 
non-punitive peace, 162-163; 
sympathetic attitude of, to- 
ward Russian Republican ap- 
peal for peace without in- 
demnities or annexations, 176; 
failure of, to meet promptly 
the Russian appeal for a com- 
mon peace and mutual for- 
giveness, 180-181; statement 
by, as to basis of settlement of 
disputed issues, 281 n ; an- 



INDEX 323 

nouncement by, in regard to World society, the hope of a new, 
treatment to be accorded Rus- 21-22. 

eia by sister nations, 293-294. 



mivTr.p i.v the uxitkd states of America 



'T'HE following pages contain advertisements of books by the 
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America Among the Nations 

By H. H. POWERS 

Cloth, i2mo, $1.50 
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The World War and 
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An Essay on Certain Political and Economic Tendencies 
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